Trails of Fire
by phollie
Summary: She was only meant to be their tool to understand the Death Note without consequences. But when Mello is forced to save her life after a close call with death, he finds that the bridge between love and hate is a little too close for comfort. MelloxOC.
1. Cotton

**Well, everyone, this is my new fic that I have been dying to write for some time now. I've been itching to write a Mello story for what feels like ages…**

**I will still be working on Through Glass, but I just couldn't wait any longer to write this…so, here's chapter one of Trails of Fire!**

**We all wish we owned Death Note, don't we?**

* * *

_…blood?_

The only taste that overrides the sweaty, foul cotton stuffed into her mouth is the pungent flavor of her own blood. It is seeping through the slits of her teeth onto her bruised lips, left to meander down her chin and eventually fall to its death on the cold floor that she has been splayed upon.

_I…can't move…_

Where she is, Bea Magill is clueless. The bastards have blindfolded her, cutting off yet another vital sense that could ease her confusion down a notch. However, she is fully aware of the voices swelling around her in a blurry vertigo. As the fog in her brain begins to dissipate, Bea listens, shivers, bleeds against heartless cement.

"Man, you better hope that ol' Jack doesn't see this one," a man grumbles. "You know he's always liked them a little soft 'round the edges."

_…soft? Are they going to…no, no, no…please, no…_

Before her mind can wander a second longer, another man speaks, gruff and threateningly close to her face. "Nah, I think Jack'll have to put up a fight with Rev for her. She's a clean one, alright."

Bea stifles the urge to vomit. His breath is nothing short of rancid, and it stings her nose with a vile bite. She squints her eyes shut beneath the blindfold and clenches her fists desperately behind her back; her wrists are most likely tattered from the harsh chord that ties them together, making her immobile.

_Where am I…? What's going to happen to me…?_

In an instant, there are rough pads of fingers against her temples, ripping the blindfold away from her eyes and mussing her hair.

She would have preferred being blind than beholding the sight before her.

The man is leering into her face, grinning like a madman, with teeth nearly rotting out of his skull and eyes bulging out of their sockets. Bea impulsively shuts her eyes again, blocking out the horror that is this man, this _monster_, but feels his fingers forcing them open once more to look at him. Her nails are digging so furiously into her palms that more blood flows from her body, in which is feeling more mangled by the second as her nerves sharpen from their oblivion, and her terror dominates her eyes as they begin to blur with tears.

He chuckles and smears the falling droplets down her cheeks until fresh ones arrive for him to assault and belittle. "Don't cry, little miss," he hisses, "we're gonna take real good care of you here. Right, Biff?"

The other man, a beefy, fat-lipped one with a head shaped like a massive melon, jerks with a snort of a laugh. "Yeah, that's right."

They know that she is terrified, and Bea knows that they are very pleased that they have such an effect on her. Against her will, she whimpers and tries to wriggle away, but only earns a chorus of cackles in return when she fails miserably. There are men in the doorway, men standing against the walls, men _mocking_ her for having a normal human reaction after awakening to a cold floor, a bloody mouth, and an ape of a man mere inches away from her face.

If there is a calm fiber remaining in her body, it flees the scene the second that the man takes his knuckles and glides them across her chin to collect a thin stream of blood. Bea stares in horror as his grin stretches wider before painting her cheek with the scarlet that he has stolen from her, and uses the energy that has not been wittled into dust to roll away from him. As her hands are pressed into the floor with her weight, she releases a strangled scream through the gag in her mouth at the sudden ambush of white-hot pain that pulses around her wrists once the chord makes a clean slice along the soft skin.

More blood. More sticky red tributaries slithering down her arms and staining her denim jacket.

More laughter, as well, pulsing around her ears and intensifying her humiliation. Bea faces the wall and feels her mental barrier snap and shatter as she tries to sob, but is only reminded of the putrid cotton and coppery blood invading her mouth. She cannot cry, but she can break.

In which Bea does as she is flipped back over and tugged at below her waist. Before she has time to react, her skirt is being clawed at until it is a pastel heap at her ankles, and she kicks wildly at the air that is now suffocating her in a mad attempt to strike her potential rapist. Her ankles are caught by another man, one that she has not seen before, as bony fingers latch around her underwear.

Mercy cannot be asked for when there is no compassion in the room. Bea learns this all too quickly as the gag is removed from her mouth and she lets loose a scream, a shrill pleading for a leniency that simply is not there.

"N-no!" she shrieks, her legs still in full throttle against the men pinning her down. "Get off of me! You don't know what you-"

"Wrong answer, baby cakes," a stranger growls into her ear. He takes hold of her hair and yanks it to one side to expose her neck, and in spite of her vicious thrashing, she is somehow contained against the floor. Her underwear remain intact, but her fear is a violent cannon that is imploding around her head and into the air in futile kicks and screams for someone, for _anyone_ to show her a fraction of care.

Just before she is exposed to the entire clan of men, a door swings open. Bea turns her head sharply to see who is entering, but her view of the scene is obscured by her own tears and the group surrounding her pathetic form. The room falls silent, as if on cue at a rehearsal; as if this entire diatribe upon the sixteen-year-old girl on the floor was nothing more than a trial run, a take one of a cinematic feature. She is the helpless leading lady sprawled out onto the floor for the supporting actors to feast upon, before her hero vaults through the door and sweeps her away into safety.

If the situation was not what it is, the idea could have sparked a smile on her lips. But, as it is, Bea sniffles and shudders upon the cement floor of the room and waits for a remedy.

She is hastily thrown her skirt, as if she can possibly put it back on in her unaided state, and the men scatter from around her as the new arriver stands in the doorway.

Bea cannot possibly look at whoever it is, not half-naked and blood-streaked and sobbing feebly on her side. She shuts her eyes tightly and awaits a strike or a question.

There is a deadly pause before a voice of lethal calm speaks, a voice that can only be compared to a sharp metal being seared into shards of glass. It is a young voive, nevertheless, lacking the hardness of age that is apparent in the other older men, but one that holds far more clout and blood-curdling resilience than Bea has heard all night.

"I suppose that this was the best you could do, Biff?"

Biff. She knows this name, she knows the face that it belongs to, but the man has retreated to the other side of the room instead of the three foot distance that had once been between she and the man. He clears his throat before responding with, "Well, boss, we couldn't find him anywhere in the house, so we just-"

"She was the only one in the house, boss," another man chimes in, greatly resembling a street rat with his dotty voice and long, narrow nose. Bea shudders at the thought of said man scuttling over to her and picking her apart like a fresh hunk of cheese.

The young man (she presumes that it is a young man; something about his voice strikes her as being younger than the others in spite of the effect his presence has on them) does not respond immediately, and Bea still cannot catch a glimpse of him. She imagines him to be the cliché villian in the black and white movies that she used to watch; slick black hair swirled into intricate designs atop his head, a dashing smirk and a heady gaze, and sharp clothing that demands the attention of everyone in the room.

So far, he already possesses the demand of attention without having to request it aloud. This alone frightens her.

_Whatever he says, they'll do…oh, please let this one be a good guy…did they knock one of my teeth out…?_

It would explain the blood, and a quick assessment of her tongue and a sprint of pain tells her that one of her top teeth, near the corner of her lips, has been swiped from the bridge of pearls. Why she did not notice the pain before can only be explained by the tirade of panic that has been exponentially swelling in her stomach, and just before she believes to nearly vomit from the fetid copper dripping down her chin and her racing nerves, the young man speaks again.

"Then you'll find him," he snaps, his voice reverberating around the walls of the room. "I don't care if you have to search the whole fucking country, but you _will_ find him, got it?"

Bea's hopes of this man being a hero are slashed in the throat barely before they can breathe. Without even having a glance at his face, she knows that this man is _seething_; his chilling voice does the work for him, and she whimpers from both the pulsing pain in her raw wrists and her dread. Something is going to happen to her, something brutal and R-rated and immoral, and she will be completely unable to stop them.

He speaks again. "Is this true? Were you the only one in your house?"

Goodness, why is he so _angry_? Could it possibly be her enraging him so callously?

"Answer me!" he orders. "Were you the only one in your house?!"

Bea intuitively clenches her fists, which only leads to a steadier blood flow from her wounds. "I don't know," she says feebly, "I-"

"Speak up!"

Another sob, more trembling. "I don't know! I c-can't remember anything!"

This is true in its entirety. When trying to think back to before waking up in this room, Bea is unable to. Her mind is an endless, endless blank, and she hears a strangled growl when she begins to cry again at her ineptitude. "Oh, Christ," one of the men mutters.

"Gag her," the young man at the doorway stipulates. "She isn't any good, just like I figured."

"N-no, please!" She shakes her head, she kicks ferociously, she screams and cries until her throat is sore, but it does not stop the gang from moving in around her to silence her. One is holding the blood-soaked cotton that had been forced within her mouth earlier, the others are simply staring at her heartlessly as she pleads for pity.

The cotton is shoved into her mouth, and a hearty kick to her head sends her mind reeling. Muted voices swirl in her ears in a mess of indecipherable sounds and vowels, and through her hazy vision, she sees the gang scattering carelessly away from the barely-cognizant minor in the corner of the room.

She looks to the doorway in desperation. The last thing she sees before the door is slammed into pitch darkness is a flash of golden hair.

* * *

**I'll delve deeper into why Bea is there in the first place in the next chapter…it'll all make sense in time, hopefully.**

**Matt will also most definitely be in this, by the way. How could I resist?**

**Reviews are greatly appreciated!**

**Until next time.**

**phollie.**


	2. Matt

**And I finally have a second chapter…sorry it took so long, everyone. I've had the massive hell that is writer's block mixed with diabolical laziness…but alas! It is here!**

**Aka, Matt is here. Yesssss.**

**I don't own Death Note. **

* * *

One of her greatest passions is playing the piano, and her fingers twitch to do so.

Bea does not acquire many talents; meager ones, to say the least; but she has always been a lover of the piano.

In the midst of her delirium, she looks around the dimly lit warehouse room in search of her solace, the white baby grand that sits in the parlor of her house, only to be greeted by a rushing in her ears and a stabbing pain in her wrists. Her bound has been released, leaving the wound exposed to the open blood is returning to her arms and from her broken tooth, as well as the tears behind her eyes, and since she assumes that she is alone she takes the opportunity to crumple into sobs.

"Well, hey, don't cry."

Bea snaps her head up and vaguely wonders how she did not see the auburn-haired young man sitting against the wall on the opposite side of the room, legs spread lazily and a cigarette dangling in the corner of his mouth. When she meets his eyes, in which are shielded by foolish goggles, he gives her a casual little wave and nods. "Salutations, miss," he says.

He breathes out a puff of smoke and smiles crookedly at her. Bea takes this as a sign that he, if not a good guy, at least has more heart than the other men she has come across, and she sits up straighter. "H-hi?" She sniffs. "Are you going to get me out of here?"

Much to her disappointment, he gives her a sardonic smirk and takes another puff from his cigarette before exhaling. "Sorry, babe, but that's not gonna work right now." He tilts his head back and stares up at the ceiling. "I'm just here to make sure you don't do anything stupid."

Bea feels the tears returning, and is glad that the young man is not looking at her right now. She looks dreadful when she cries. "Th-then who are you? Why can't you-"

He raises his hands defensively, cutting her off. "Whoa, whoa, miss, one question at a time!" He releases a little chuckle and flicks the ashes of his cigarette onto the cement. "The name's Matt. Now, what else do you wanna ask me?"

Bea winces at the sight of a drop of blood falling to the floor from her wrist, and before she can pull her arm away, she hears Matt suck in a pitiful breath and say, "Alright, questions later. Can't have you getting all infected on us, Mello would castrate me on the spot." He stands up with a groan and approaches her, but Bea intuitively shrinks back when he kneels in front of her. There have been far too many men taking steps towards her, pawing at her, and she is not taking chances with this one either.

Matt sighs and bows his head before looking at her again through orange plastic. "Look, there'd be no point in me hurting you, so you don't have to worry about that, alright?" His voice is softer than the young man Bea heard hours ago in the doorway, much less brash and overbearing, but she keeps her face turned away from him and bites upon her bottom lip to keep herself from crying again. Her raw wrists are throbbing, the blood is trickling horridly down her palms and fingers until licking the floor in glittering red droplets.

The young man sighs again. "If that gets infected, you'll be in a world of shit. You know what that means, miss?"

Bea shakes her head wordlessly.

Matt flicks his ashes onto the floor once more. "That means I'll be in a world of shit as well. That won't be good for either of us, alright?" He stands up , drops the used cigarette from his mouth and crushes it beneath his shoe. "Glad you get it."

Before he can walk away too far, Bea scoots forward and makes a small whimper in her throat. "Where are you-"

Matt looks over his shoulder at her, cocking one auburn eyebrow. "Hey, I'm just going to get some things for that cut of yours, not plotting some big rape episode for you, ok?"

He is not answering her questions directly, and Bea feels a swelling of desperation rising in her chest. "Tell me why I'm here!" she orders. The façade of strength that she had plastered on at the spur of the moment flees the second that she hears her voice crack. Matt is staring at her, unphased but waiting for her to speak again. She obliges. "Please. None of this makes sense. I…I just wake up here with a bunch of strangers and no one's telling me any-"

"I can't."

Bea wishes he would take those goggles off. She wants to see if there is any sympathy for her in his eyes. "C-can't? Why not? I need to know why-"

"Miss, miss," Matt addresses, holding his hands up again, "it's not like they just stole you because you were an easy catch." He runs his slender fingers through his hair and gives an ironic laugh. "But yeah, you were definitely easy."

Bea's mouth gapes open and she sucks in a breath that was stolen from her outrage. "Easy? It's not like I was ever expecting something like this to-"

She is cut short again when Matt chuckles lightly, but she keeps her eyes on him. He begins walking away again towards the doorway, one thumb linked in the belt loops of his jeans. "Yeah, that's not what your father thought."

_My…father?_

She can only stare after him. She has no words, no declarations or demands or even whimpers. There is a blank stone slate in her mind that has been clouded over with confusion and left to suffer in ignorance. Her father would have nothing to dow with this. He would never allow her to be bounded and kicked in the head and belittled to the point where she was cowering in the corner of a cold room waiting for a large-handed man to barge in and corrupt her.

Matt does not look back at her before he leaves, and closes the door softly behind him. "You're welcome," he mutters.

* * *

It takes him an hour to return, and he returns to sobs.

Bea is clutching her wrist, alternating between both, and rocking back and forth on the floor. Christ, she is bleeding, _bleeding_, and the moment that Matt enters she finds herself in rage.

"It took you an _hour_?" she cries out, beside herself with pain. She is not one to yell, but she is one to cry, and the agonizing burning within her wounded flesh and the dry manner that Matt looks back at her with allows her to do both at once.

Matt sighs and kneels in front of her, dumping the contents of the bag onto the cement. His hair is wet, and Bea blurrily decides that he has either taken a shower or that it is raining outside. Once she inhales the pungent scent of tobacco in his clothes, she rules out the former and waits for a response.

"Hey, I had to go out to town to get this stuff for you, so you should be thanking me," he says. He keeps his eyes on the seal of the bottle of antiseptic and begins peeling it off the cap.

Her fury returns with a searing bout of pain and more drops of blood. "Thanking you?" she breathes out. "For not telling me why I'm here in the first place?"

Matt groans and removes the cap from the bottle, keeping his eyes down. "Do you want me to lose my balls here? I told you, I can't give out too much until Mello talks to you."

Bea does not recall him telling her this, and she shakes her head in protestation. "You never said that," she says weakly.

Matt looks up at her now through the orange shields of his goggles, then places the open bottle onto the floor and starts unrolling crisp white bandages. "Mello has a lot of questions for you. That _he'll_ ask. Not me. I'm just here to make sure you don't do anything stupid."

"S-stupid? I can barely move!"

"Then consider me useless," he says casually, shrugging his thin shoulders. "But who else would be wrapping you up and making sure you don't bleed to death from your little wrists, babe?" He picks up the antiseptic again and looks at her for a moment, contemplating something that Bea cannot sense. Sighing, he places the bottle back down and mutters, "Shit." Reaching up to his goggles, he pulls them off his eyes and rests them atop his bangs, then returns to the task at hand with indifference.

A lively green, his eyes are. Bea wonders why he insists on blocking them off from the world with that unsightly orange plastic in the first place.

In fact, she realizes that he is quite handsome now that she is able to see his eyes. While the slightly red indentations below his eyes from the goggles still remain, he has a soft, amenable face that Bea finds herself sighing with relief at. While he is not giving her the answers that she needs, at least he is not peering at her with monstrous teeth bared, or lack thereof, and spitting cruel threats beneath his breath at her.

When he places his palm against her mouth holds the bottle in his other hand, Bea's thoughts of him not being threatening like the others are diminished. She tries to free herself from him and scream, but Matt merely mutters something unintelligable and says, "This stuff is going to sting like hell, so I don't want you to make a big scene and have the entire population run in to see what's going on. Chill out."

The exasperation in his voice causes Bea to blush with embarrasssment at the misunderstanding and nod. Seeing his eyes makes his words seem all the more serious, all the more human, and she attemps at bracing herself for the antiseptic to be washed over her raw flesh.

As always, she falls, flails, fails.

The agony is so intense that she releases a gutteral scream into Matt's palm, in which she is suddenly thankful for for muffling her, and kicks her legs in a wordless plea for it to end. She hears the horrid fizzing of the liquid upon her inflamed cut, her own cries, and Matt once again mumbling something under his breath. Freezing, freezing cold bubbling in the slit of her wrist and the warm ache of tears down her face; the humiliation and unawareness of the situation she has been unwillingly thrown into bring all of this to pummel down upon her until she is fighting to sit up and allow Matt to clean the remaining blood from her forearm.

"Damn, that was straight out of a horror movie," Matt says with a smirk. He screws the cap back onto the antiseptic and glances up at Bea. "Maybe you should be an actress."

Bea stares at him incredulously. "That wasn't acting," she responds shakily. There are still tears dripping down her cheeks and clinging to her chin, and she quickly wipes them away to avoid looking more foolish. She decides that Matt is the cause of her humiliation, since he had insisted on pouring what felt like hot acid onto her wounds.

Nevertheless, Matt shrugs and stretches out the roll of bandages to apply to her wrists. "Well, hey, I was just saying. That was a pretty impressive show you had going there." He looks up at her with a glimmer of mirth. "Not to say that you were faking it. That shit hurts, doesn't it?"

Bea squirms when he gently places the edge of the bandage onto her arm, but goes still to allow him to begin wrapping it. "I wasn't screaming for no reason. It hurt."

Matt chuckles for reasons unknown. He has a nice laugh; soft, carefree, calming. "The screaming didn't give that away," he jibes. Rolling the gauze around her left wrist, he flicks his dark fringe out of his bottle green eyes and furrows his brow in concentration. There is a wordless string between them for a minute as he aids her before he speaks again. "But, yeah, you know Mello's going to have to talk to you soon."

Bea winces when the bandage reaches a raw spot. "Who's he?"

Matt turns his eyes onto hers for a second before clearing his throat, turning back to his work. "He just needs to get some things clear with you. You'll find out when you guys talk." He says this too casually, too smooth for it to be genuine.

"Get things clear with me?" she repeats in agitation. "I don't understand why I-"

"It's not exactly you, babe," Matt says beneath his breath. "It's - yeah, well, you'll figure it out later. Mello's the guy you have to talk to. I'm just his nicotine-addicted secondary."

Bea feels a fresh surge of impatience and a sting of pain where Matt presses the bandage. "I won't tell him that you told me."

It is a childish phrase, one in which she should have dropped years ago, but the situation calls for any method of gaining information. In Bea's mind of only sixteen years, she feels that even the most desperate attempt is better than submission.

"No can do, little miss," Matt says with a shake of his head. Bea ignores the fact that he is clearly condescending her, for it is something that she has grown used to. She sighs and waits for him to seal the bandage on her left wrist with a strip of medical tape. When he takes her right hand to begin wrapping it, she turns her eyes away from him and feels the tears returning. She inwardly scolds herself for not being able to go five minutes without crying like an unripe fool, that in which she has the great potential to be.

"Look," Matt says softly, "I can at least tell you that you're not here to be raped or cut up or any of that shit. I mean, yeah, you're a little cut up, but-"

"They took off my skirt last night," Bea mutters bitterly. "The door opened and they stopped, but they were going t-"

"Mello wouldn't have let them," Matt interjects quickly. "Mello thinks ahead when he wants to. He wouldn't have been able to talk to you if you were all traumatized and beaten up, right?" He aids her right wrist carefully, his eyes on the bandage and not on her watering russet eyes. "Hey, might be a pretty selfish reason, but at least it keeps you a little safer."

Bea feels a wave of nausea when she glances down at her gash that Matt is tending to. She focuses on the dark roots of the young man's hair to distract herself. "How old is he?" she asks warily.

"Nineteen," Matt says after a beat.

Bea sits up straigher at his response. "Really?"

"Wasn't lying."

When her right wrist is securely wrapped, Matt releases it and digs through the pocket of his jeans. He retracts with a cigarette and fishes out his lighter. "I wouldn't underestimate him if I were you. He's a pretty smart guy, you see. If he wasn't, it wouldn't have been so easy to find you."

The nausea returns to her stomach. "What?"

The flame of Matt's lighter licks the end of his fresh cigarette and takes a welcoming puff. Exhaling, he shakes his head. "Shit, I've already told you too much. Forget about that."

"Forget?" Bea asks in disbelief. "He's the one who brought me here?"

Matt gives her an irritated groan and flicks his ashes onto the floor. "No," he says, "and that's all I can tell you now. Sorry, babe."

Bea turns away from him sharply and bites upon her bottom lip. Her breathing is becoming heavier with impatience, but she refuses to cry in front of him again. She is a stupid child for thinking that she has the influence to drag answers out of this young man, and she bites harder onto her lip at the thought.

She hears him speak, but does not give him the liberty of acknowledging him. "You're gonna make me feel bad about this, aren't y-"

"Matt."

The second voice is sharp, cold, searing, and Bea comes to the chilling realization that she recognizes this voice. It belongs to the same young man that had been at the doorway, causing the other men to scatter and go on high alert at his questioning.

And now, he is standing at that same doorway that Bea cannot look over to, that she cannot bring herself to face. She knows he is there, waiting to ask her questions that she will not be able to answer.

She knows that this must be him. _Mello._

Matt looks back at her after having surveyed the doorway and gives her a cryptic look, one that she cannot tell whether it is a smirk or a grimace. "Well, I'll leave this to you," he says beneath his breath, standing up and taking another deep puff of his cigarette. He gives her a slight nod as he exhales a billow of smoke and walks away.

Still, Bea cannot look.

The first question that Mello asks after a long, silent minute is enough to force her to look up at him.

"Where is your father?"


	3. Topaz

**

* * *

So sorry for how long this chapter took…I was plagued by a horrible wave of writer's block. Nevertheless, here is the long awaited chapter two!**

**Don't own Death Note, loves. **

* * *

"Wh-what?"

Her father?

"Speak up!"

"But…"

Why can she still not see him? Bea knows he is in the doorway, for she is looking directly at it, but the sudden change in the lighting has caused her vision to be blindsided. The light fans out behind him too brightly for her to be able to make out any features, but she sees a silhouette, and that is all she needs to know that she is facing a threat, a threat that she does not know how to shake off. Nevertheless, she gapes up at the shape in the doorway and swallows hard.

"Please," she utters, "I don't know why I'm here, and I just want to-"

"Shut up!"

The very grittiness of his voice is enough to send Bea cowering back into the corner, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to prepare herself for a next order that she will not be able to satisfy. The pain in her wrists mounts suddenly, and she whimpers, bowing her head and biting upon her lip.

"I'll ask again; where is your father?" the young man at the door hisses.

Bea warily looks up at the shadow. The light is still pouring out from behind him, making him nothing more than a black mass that she cannot decipher. "I-I don't know, I just-"

"What do you mean you don't know?" he bellows. His voice cracks on the last word, a violent shift in tone, already adding to his acidic fashion.

Oh, and now he is walking towards her; no, _barreling_ towards her quicker than Bea is able to scoot away from, and she is suddenly face-to-face with her interrogator with him jerking her up by her shirt after a flash of leather and gold.

The gold belongs to his hair, in which falls choppily over his forehead and brushes his shoulders in uncombed, sordid strands. Bea wishes it would cover his eyes; they are the most chilling crystal blue she has ever seen, wired with fever, searing into her wide brown ones with such a cold intesity that she would look away from him if she was not so petrified of the consequences.

The hand that is gripping her collar is rugged, the knuckles scraped and raw, and the squalid smell of blood reaches her nose again. As she twists to release herself from his grasp, she hears him murmur beneath his breath and pull her face closer to his, so very close that Bea is afraid that she will be burned from the heat of his eyes.

"Now, I'll ask again," he hisses, his voice dropping to an icy calm. "_Where the fuck is he."_

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

It is an outburst that causes the young man she presumes to be Mello to send her crashing back down to the floor after he jostles her free from him. Bea curls up against the wall, staring up at him with wild eyes. "I can't remember anything from before this!" she pleads. "I was at home, and suddenly everything goes black and I wake up in here! I don't-"

The lethal glint in his eyes is enough to stop her short from completing her explanation. His head is bowed, only his eyes looking up at her, and through the screen of blonde bangs, she sees that noxious flash of blue. Bea takes brief note of the fact that even though he does not tower over her and is lean in his build, she is quite certain that he could floor her within seconds. Hell, he just had her pinned with a single curl of his fist against her shirt; the very idea of what else he could inflict upon her makes her stomach flip.

"P-please," she whispers pathetically. God, her wrists…

She cannot look at him any longer, or at least without feeling her nerves twitch beneath her skin, her pulse racing at whatever next assault she will be served with, but she keeps her eyes on him, preparing to dodge. But he is just _staring_ at her with such a hatred that she questions if he is in fact looking at her and not someone else that she cannot see. She does not even know him, and the same applies to him, but she feels utterly loathed already.

But he does not approach her again. He does not make any attempt to strike her.

Bea watches him with trepidation as he pulls out a pair of leather gloves from his jacket pocket, pulls them on each slender hand and stalks out the door.

* * *

She dreams of a fortune teller she came across at the age of thirteen. Old, rusted carnival. Shifty grey eyes. Bea, sitting on a dilapidated rug on the ground, shielded by a cheap tent.

_"Beatrice…it rings of safety. The need for…protection, security. But I must tell you this, child…there are some people that are not destined to feel safety. Some of us…fragile human beings that we are…we must fight for our protection. Can you fight, Beatrice?"  
_

No. No, she cannot. Which is why when she is roughly shaken by the shoulders, she awakes to sobbing and Matt.

His goggles are atop his head again, exposing his jade eyes, and he looks at her with a sort of confused concern that pulls her out of her delirium. He shakes his head, releasing her shoulders. "Jesus, babe, you need to stop weirding me out like that. Thought you were possessed or something."

Bea gazes at Matt, whom is suddenly a savior in her eyes, and she wipes her eyes with the back of her sore hand. In the midst of her lurid stupor, he is beautiful, rescuing her from a preteen memory she thought she had long abandoned, deemed as unimportant. He is rummaging through a paper bag, labeled with the name of a fast food chain that Bea does not recognize, and retrieves something wrapped in plastic that he hands to her. "Couldn't have you starving on us, right?"

He flashes her a crooked grin, and for a fleeting moment, she is in love, all because he is a familiar face with eyes that are not menacing and narrowed upon her. He does not hate her, and even if he does without her knowing, she is not cowering at the sight of him. She accepts the food offering and sets it down, hands trembling. "Sorry," she says hoarsely. Her throat is sore, and upon wincing at speaking, Matt hands her a tall cup full of soda. She smiles weakly and nods once, acknowledging him wordlessly.

"It's been raining all day, you know," Matt says casually. He pulls out a similar item wrapped in plastic and proceeds to unwrap it. It is only now that Bea notices his hair is wet once more, darkening its auburn hue to a rich brown. He takes a wide bite of his cheeseburger and chews langorously, eyes not on her. Bea is unsure as to why she is watching him so carefully; perhaps she fears he will suddenly twist on her, throw her against the wall and demand more foreign answers out of her like her previous blonde visitor had. Matt swallows and looks at her. "But, yeah, not much going on out there."

Bea does not bother asking him what he is referring to and unwraps her own burger, realizing how ravenous she has become. She allows him to continue talking, filling the cold silence that she suddenly fears.

"The city's so weird when it rains, I'm tellin' you. The people, they frown so much and cover their heads like it's raining fucking acid. Me, on the other hand, I like the rain. It helps me think, you know?" Matt is not looking at her again, his green eyes instead on his food and the floor. "Smoking helps with that, too, but you know how people get when you bring that u-"

"Mello has blue eyes," Bea blurts out. She has grown itchy with his rambling. She needs answers, just like the blonde had when he grabbed her by her shirt.

Matt looks up at her now, a funny expression on his soft face. He looks like a child when he is confused; a wide-eyed, gaping child. "Yeah, he does," he says slowly. Bea sees the realization settle in with him, and his mouth opens when he nods knowingly. "Ahh, I got you now, babe. How'd that go?"

He says it all too conversationally for her not to bite down on her bottom lip, look him hard in the eye. "I think you know very well how it went," she accuses quietly.

There is a second in which Matt just looks at her, caught, but he sighs and drops his half-eaten burger onto the plastic wrapping. "Look, sweetheart, Mello gets a little…uppity when he's stressed out, and Mello sure is stressed out a hell of a lot. You have to expect this type of shit from a guy like him."

"How could I expect it if you refused to tell me anything about him?"

She has him here, she can see it in the shifting in his eyes. "Fine, you're right about that, I guess," he mutters. "But still, I couldn't just go around telling our captive girl exactly who Mello was before he talked to you-

"He didn't _talk_ to me, Matt," Bea objects desperately. "He…he came in and asked me about my father and jerked me up when I c-couldn't answer him…"

Matt continues staring at her, mulling her words over silently. There are yellow flecks in his eyes, Bea notices in the midst of her strain.

"Why does everyone keep asking me about my father?" she whispers. She fears that if her voice gains too much volume, she will only succeed in cracking again. "My father wouldn't put me here."

At this, Matt flashes her a look that is meant to make her reconsider. His eyes are a tad wider, head tilting back an inch. "Well, babe, maybe you should have paid more attention to the outings your daddo went on."

Bea backs away from Matt, taken back by the low tone to his voice and the words that come with it. "Wh-what are you talking about?"

"Look, if I tell you, I'll get my ass handed to me on a platter." Matt reaches into his pocket for a slightly bent cigarette and his lighter. "If I don't tell you, you'll give me that look you always give me…that one, the one you're doing right now." Matt nods his head in her direction as he lights his smoke. "Makes a guy feel bad, you know?"

"Then just _tell me,_" Bea requests. "It's something that has to do with me, so there's no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to know!" Overcome with impatience, she props herself up on her knees and leans in to Matt. "Matt," she whispers, "you can't just keep me waiting here wondering what's going to happen to me. How would you like it if-"

"Hey, hey," Matt attests, holding his hands up, "you can't use that example on a guy like me." When it appears as though he will say more, he suddenly closes his mouth and shakes it off. "Just chill out a little, babe. What do you think Mello'll do, tear your skin off?"

"No. He'll grab me by the shirt and throw me to the ground like he did when he came in."

She startles herself with the acidic tone her voice has acquired, and after the brief widening of Matt's jade eyes, he tightens his lips and releases a puff of air through his nose. "Look, I'll talk to him, alright? I'll talk to him." He pauses a moment, giving her an expectant look that calls for a timid nod as response. "Now, cut it with that look of yours, it's making me feel like shit."

He surprises her with a grin, soft and with one small corner of his mouth, and Bea feels her shoulders relax at the relieving sight. Something delightfully human, not corrupt with unanswerable questions and flashes of topaz aimed directly at her. He is so human that it almost pains her, knowing how few and sparing such people are wherever she is.

She is disappointed when he stands up, but watches with a childlike fascination as he lifts his dark grey T-shirt up, exposing his flat stomach and the faint line of hair stretching downwards from his naval. He scratches the expanse of skin and lowers his shirt once more, seemingly not noticing her gazing upwards at him curiously. "Like I said, you'll get used to Mello eventually. You can't expect him to warm up to you too quickly, Bea."

Bea shoots her head up, taken back by his use of her name without having given it. "H-how do you know my name? Matt?"

Matt stands at the doorway now, his back to her with his goggles shielding his eyes. He glances over his shoulder briefly before saying, "Sorry, baby, but we all know your name here."

* * *

**Hope the wait was worth it! I'll try and update quicker next chapter, I promise. **


	4. Exposure

**I had a lot of fun writing this chapter…the imagery of my dear Mello being such a prick was, needless to say, endearing to write. ::smirks::**

**And many thanks to EleganBlack for being super awesome in every way possible! She knows who she is. ::pats on back::**

**Anyway, enjoy! I don't own Death Note. **

* * *

"Get her up."

_That voice…_

"Aw, Mel, back to that already? She's exhausted, for Christ's sake."

_Matt…?_

"Well, consider the idea that I don't give a flying _fuck_ whether or not she's exhausted. Now, _get her up._"

_No…no, no, no, not him again…_

Truth of the matter is that Bea is not asleep on the cement floor, her hair soiled and strewn over her face, and has not been sleeping for hours. At the first sound of footsteps that she heard just minutes before, she had collapsed onto the ground in a seemingly sleeping heap, all the avoid the possible questions that could greet her when the door opened, yet at the same time be aware of what was happening around her. She is careful not to twitch, gasp, breathe even a beat out of step, so careful that her stomach is cramping and twisting at the very idea of Mello learning that she is indirectly lying all to escape _him._

_But Matt is here…he won't let Mello do anything to me if he's with him…or at least that's what I'd like to think…_

"What's got your balls in a pinch, Mel? Can't you just scare the shit out of her when she's actually awake?"

Bea hears a sudden scuffling of shoes upon the ground, and if she is not mistaken, they are the hard heels of boots. A thick surge of dread simmers in her chest when she hears the footsteps grow closer to her, and she is suddenly thankful for the hair over her face concealing the telltale grimace of one expecting a slap in the face at any second.

No, not a slap…but the callused hand of Mello yanking her up by the collar of her shirt. Bea lets out a yelp of both fright and pain of her neck jerking back at the action, hears the groan of objection from Matt a few feet away, but sees _blue._

The eyes are back in her mind now, burning and searing into her, _blue_, so pitiless and so frigid that she bites upon her bottom lip, _blue_, terrifyingly close to hers, almost biting out at her, _blue_…

There is a moment in which Mello simply holds her up by her collar, studying her face with a callous hatred, and Bea is too numbed to look away from him. Her toes curl in her socks, preparing for a strike to her face, but it does not come as she expects. He releases her collar, a scowl heavy on his lips. "You're coming with Matt and I," he explains bitterly. When Bea opens her mouth to speak, he cuts her off brutally with, "Don't ask questions. The only person asking those in here is me, you got it?"

Bea's eyes flit over to Matt, who is standing awkwardly in the corner, a plastic bag in his arms and an unlit cigarette hanging loosely in his mouth. He meets her eye briefly, almost guiltily, but he wipes the expression off and gives her a little nod, a small smile with nothing behind it.

When Bea does not give any form of acknowledgment, too bleak to respond at all, Mello grabs her by her bandaged wrist with the intention of pulling her away, but earns a shrill scream when the bandage presses into the raw skin. Mello leaps back at the sound, his eyes for once shocked instead of hateful, but he scoffs and backs away from her. "Look, if you're going to do nothing but scream all the goddamn time-"

"She's hurt, Mel," Matt attests suddenly. "The cord that the guys put on her cut her wrists all up, alright? Chill out, man."

Bea stares down at the floor, both embarrassed and overwhelmed by Matt's defense and the blinding pain in her wrists, but bites harder on her lip and says nothing.

Mello makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat and reaches out to grab her again, this time by the forearm. "Whatever," he mumbles, "just quit with your whimpering and let's go."

* * *

Mello wants the girl to strip down to bare skin before him.

"Wh-what?" Bea stutters, gripping onto her skirt. "But…but can't I just-"

"No," Mello interrupts. He stands by a small window shielded with unsightly blinds, the heavy lace of night seeping through the slats. His arms are crossed over his chest, in which is exposed from his vest, with such authority that he almost appears to be a caricature of a human and not the young man that Bea was currently gaping at. "I'm not taking any risks here."

Bea's eyes widen at his ridiculous statement. "But what risks? Do you…do you think I'm going to try to escape or something?" Her voice is breathless, stolen with the sheer gravity of the situation she has been thrown into. "Because Matt already told me that he wouldn't let me…a-and I don't even know how to get out of here, let alone-"

"Shut up!" Mello barks, taking a violent string of steps towards her. "Don't make me have to do it for you!"

Bea leaps back, breathing heavily from the fresh fear of him being so close to her. She shakes her head rapidly, her hair covering her eyes again. "N-no! No, I'll do it, fine, it's _fine_, I…"

Mello releases a sigh through his nostrils, his jaw clenching up. "I'm not about to take any chances with you right now. You don't seem to get that this isn't some little game that you can play your way out of." At this, Mello takes a step towards her, to the point where Bea can feel that clenching blue digging into her again. Some of the heat is taken off when a lock of golden hair falls down into his gaze, but Bea keeps her breath tight and locked away in her chest. He gives her a dark smirk, one that either makes his face devastatingly beautiful or wretched; Bea cannot decide. "And if you don't answer my questions, I don't answer yours. That's just how it goes."

Instinctively, Bea steps back, but trips on her footing and crashes to the ground. In any other situation, she would have been humiliated, but in this case, she is seeing red through her baffled rage. "That…that is completely different!" she breathes out. "If I could actually answer your questions, it would make a little more sen-"

"You _can_ answer my questions," Mello hisses as he approaches her even closer. "But you're choosing not to because you think it'll save your little ass."

Bea cringes at his word choice, stunned. She says nothing as Mello shakes his head in a mockery of sympathy. "Your poor thing," he croons, "thinking that I'll play along in your little chase in order to get an answer out of you."

He is laughing at her, and as much as Bea wishes for him to drop dead upon the floor, she keeps her mouth shut, biting upon her tongue in order to stifle her scream. She does not understand why he possesses such a hatred for her…but her hatred for him, however, has a solid ground, a legitimate reason, and it is further fueled by the smirk in his eyes.

"You're not going to win, Beatrice," Mello jeers.

The sound of her name coming from his lips sends a hot flush of rage through Bea's stressed bloodstream, both fury and fear now heavily washing through her. Now, even if she wanted to, she does not speak all because she literally cannot do so. Her throat is closing up, her vision going blurry with tears, and as much as she wishes to fling herself forward and tear his hair out, she knows she is incapable of such a feat when this young man has the ability to floor her with a single hand.

Oh, she utterly _loathes_ him.

"Now, undress. We're wasting time, something you seem to be pretty good at," Mello says boredly.

Bea does not, however, and stares down at the floor, trembling violently from excruciating wrath and the talons of fear that still have a firm grip on her.

"I won't say it again."

"Then don't," Bea whispers inaudibly to herself as she clenches her fists. Her hair fans down over her face, hiding her tears, but she glances up at Mello when she hears him groan and fling open the door. Matt, whom had been leaning against the door from the outside, crashes to the floor with a confused yelp of a curse. "What the hell, man?" he orders, standing up and rubbing the elbow he landed on. "Just flinging open doors out of nowhere and shit, what's that all about?"

Bea cannot recall ever being so relieved at the sight of the green-eyed boy, and she shakily brushes her hair out of her face and wipes her cheeks free of tears. Mello kicks the door shut and crosses his arms, staring at Bea again with an intense disdain. "Ask our friend," he snaps with a jerk of his head in her direction.

Matt's eyes, shielded by goggles, meet Bea's, and a light frown grazes his mouth. "She doesn't look like she's in the mood to answer any questions, Mel," he says with a shrug. "Give her a break."

Mello's eyes widen to a comical extent, and the caricature complex has returned to his striking face. "Then how the fuck do you justify a detainee refusing to change, Matt?"

A lighter has appeared from Matt's pocket, and he casually lights the cigarette between his lips; how many does he smoke in a day? "She's shy. It's pretty common with sixteen-year-old girls being told to strip, Mel."

Mello glares at Matt for a moment, jaw slack, before throwing his hands up in mock defeat. "Then you take care of the search, Matt. Be my fucking guest. I'm out."

As he storms away, Matt gives an exasperated sigh, tilting his head back as if he is so incredibly used to the blonde's performance. "Oh, Jesus Christ, not this again…"

"I'm fucking out," Mello mutters furiously beneath his breath. "So done with this _shit_…"

And just like that, he is out of the room, slamming the door harshly behind him. Bea stares at the space that Mello once occupied, stunned by his mood decline in a matter of seconds, but lets out a breath and regains her footing. "Matt…?"

The young man in question nods again and takes a short drag of his cigarette. "He gets pissy every now and then." A graceful mouthful of smoke dances out of his mouth with each word, and Bea watches it float away and die out. "You look a little shaken up, baby."

Bea clears her throat and wipes her palms off on her skirt. "I'm fine," she lies.

"You're lying," Matt says with a smirk, "but that's alright. I lie, too."

As Bea watches him in fascination, Matt flicks his ashes onto the floor and releases a sigh. "But, look, I'm gonna have to get you to change clothes before he gets back."

"Why can't I just-"

Matt cuts her off with a chuckle. "Hey, I'm not here just to eyeball you or any of that. Besides, I'm sure you'd prefer me in here than Mel, right?"

He has a point, but her question has not been answered yet. "Mello said that he isn't going to take any risks with me by not having me change," Bea quietly explains. "I don't understand…"

Matt rubs his elbow again, shifts his shoulder back and sighs at the relieving crack the joint gives. "It's just a precaution. Mello doesn't even explain half of his theories to me, let alone to the girl that he's holding captive." Matt takes a little step towards her, grinning. "And you don't really look like the type of girl to carry around daggers or any of that."

Bea, unsure of whether or not this is a compliment, smiles slightly and bows her head. "If that's what this is about, then he doesn't have to worry about me."

Matt is just about to speak when the door opens again, and much to Bea's dismay, Mello reenters with an expression that is only a notch calmer than before. She immediately sets her jaw and bites upon her tongue when he speaks. "Well, Matt?"

The auburn-haired boy shrugs his shoulders. "I was just talking to her. Chill out."

"You shouldn't be _just talking to her_, Matt," Mello says through gritted teeth. "You should be getting her to change, not dicking around with _just talking to-_"

Bea silences them both when she yanks down her skirt, kicks it away furiously, ignores the stunned reaction of Matt and the glare of Mello. Without another second's hesitation, she pulls her shirt over her head and throws it into the corner, standing in the middle of the room with only her bra and underwear. The humiliation settles in when she realizes that she has committed to this without having thought it out at all, that she is half-naked in front of two young men that she barely knows.

And not only that, but Matt is blushing. He clears his throat and takes a longer drag of his cigarette, looking down at the floor as if fascinated by the cement, and Bea squeezes her eyes shut so as to block both his reaction and Mello's, in which is a narrow-eyed cynicism that she detests.

_Please, just let this be over…please, please just get it done with…_

When she reaches down to the plastic bag with her change of clothes, she is stopped by the sound of footsteps. "Hold still," Mello orders.

Like an ice-cold stab to the heart, Bea is frozen in her place, her mind reeling with what could possibly come next. _No…no, he couldn't possibly…not with Matt standing right there…no, please don't let this happen…_

But there are hands on her chest, patting up and around her bra to her back, and Bea cannot open her eyes to expose the burning tears that struggle to let themselves free. Mello's callused hands hurriedly dip down to her underwear, merely skimming atop the material, but Bea squirms and shivers and bites back a sob of objection before his hands leave her. "She's clear," Mello mutters.

_Clear…?_

Bea's eyes snap open, and she sees that the blonde is trudging away with his hands shoved in his pockets. A glance over to Matt shows that his face is beet red by now, but surely not as scalding as Bea's at the search. Mello's voice pierces her ears before he leaves again. "Get changed. I expect you back out within five minutes."

The door is slammed shut again, and Bea yanks out a T-shirt and sweatpants from the bag without a word or another glance at Matt. She swallows back her tears in vain as she quickly pulls the change of clothes on.

"You alright, babe?"

She barely has time to register Matt's words when she throws her old clothes into the back, slings it over her shoulder and storms out the door, choking out, "Thanks for trying to stop him."

* * *

It rains at around three in the morning, and Bea cannot sleep through it. Each and every sound is magnified in her ears, her senses heightened by her paranoia, the feeling of Mello's obtrusive hands on her chest still fresh in her memory.

Yet she wishes for a window to look out of. She wants to _see_ the rain, be confirmed of its survival with means other than simply hearing it. For now, as she lays in a numb heap on the cold grey floor, she is unsure of whether she is truly alive or not.

_Dad…_

So many inquiries pummeling down upon her, racing through her body to see which one will steal her sanity first. At this rate, it is the one that pleads to know why she is here in the first place, sloppily dressed in foreign clothes and weeping in an unknown warehouse. Her fate is bleak in her mind, as black as the night that she cannot see, but the darkness that washes over the entire windowless room.

And just as she screams out to the ceiling, growing mad in her colorless cell, a door opens.

It is Mello. She knows by the ominous energy that erupts in the pit of her stomach and the lean silhouette in the doorway.

"You want to know why you're here?"

Why is he asking her such a mindless question? Bea closes her eyes and curls up tighter on the floor, trembling. "Yes," she whispers. "I need to know…right now…"

There is a dark silence. The rain lessens for a string of seconds before suddenly increasing in its wrath upon the roof, and Bea can almost feel it raining in her head as she awaits Mello's response.

It comes with a gruff sort of reluctance, but nevertheless, Mello finally speaks.

"Fine. But you're coming with me."

* * *

**Hope I'm still not butchering Mello's character, he's surprisingly difficult to write…**

**  
And I promise that I won't wheel around having to explain the reason why Bea's there in the first place in the next chapter, lol. It picks up in the next chapter, trust me.**

**Reviews make me dance naughtily.**


	5. Princess

**Well, guys, this chapter was going to be much, much longer, but I decided that I like this ending and that it won't be as choppy if I put the next part in a new chapter. Soooooo, yeah.**

**I don't own Death Note. (I want Mello's gloves, though. Those things are hot.)**

* * *

Bea expects nothing less out of her luck. She is blindfolded (again, she had regarded with a bitter groan as Mello had slipped it over her eyes) and Matt is guiding her down a chilly corridor with a hand on her shoulder. In her dark stupor, she can hear the incessant clacking of Mello's boots on the cement floor, and she assumes that he is in front of them, but her senses are once more muddled by not being able to see where the prick is.

"Why do I have to be blindfolded?" Bea mutters to Matt by her side, her voice monotonous and so very _done_ with this charade enacted by the blonde boy in leather.

There is a hesitation, but Matt squeezes her shoulder lightly and sighs. "Well, you see…Mello has this little fetish for cute girls in blindfolds, and I try to tell him that it's freaky as shit, but-"

"_What_?!" Bea hisses, stopping in her tracks when her stomach gives a violent churn.

She hears Matt hiss out a string of laughter as he coaxes her back into waking. "Damn, I didn't think you'd fall for that so easy, baby. You sure do take things seriously, don't you?"

Bea serves him a guffawed kick to the shin in hopes of striking him, but fails and nearly crashes to the floor as her foot flies out from under her clumsy form. Matt catches her flailing body effortlessly and snorts back another chuckle. "First you nearly go into cardiac arrest, then you pull a mean stunt like that? You ever taken a special effects class, miss?"

Bea answers with a frustrated growl, biting her tongue so as to not erupt in screams. Her mood is rapidly dwindling down into a sweeping fury, and since it is a rare occasion enough that the brunette is angry to begin with, she tries in vain to push away the hot, raw emotion that she does not wish to welcome.

Matt, however, is as carefree and ironic as ever. "I'm telling you, girl, you should really think about becoming an actress, like I said. You'd be huge," he continues casually as he releases another hoarse chuckle. "Hey, I could even be your manager. That'd be pretty sweet."

"Too bad I'm stuck blindfolded and kidnapped, right?" Bea whispers furiously.

That anger again…she is not entirely sure of where it comes from, even now as she blindly sidles down an alien hallway. It is not from Matt, because she knows that he is the only person here that she can invest a shard of trust in, sarcastic and laid-back as he is. She has not had the misfortune to come across the monsters that had tried to assault her when she had first woken up in this place, so this budding, fresh anger would not be from their callused hands, their rancid breath. And Mello-

Yes. She has struck that white-hot chord of rage that has lay untapped for sixteen years within her. She _hates_ Mello. Or with a heart as inexperienced and naïve as Beatrice Magill's, wants to at least tear his golden hair out of his head and shatter his narrow nose with a crush of her fist, but then apologize, because she knows even in the blinding fog of fury, her instinct would force her to.

In a cool gust of wind, Bea realizes that she is now outside; her thoughts disabled her from hearing the sound of any door opening, and she takes a step back in spite of Matt guiding her forward. "W-where are we go-"

"Come on, Bea baby, Mel's gonna shit if you keep stopping like this," Matt muttered into her ear. His warm breath flushed across Bea's neck and she jumped at the close contact, unaware of his close proximity. "What do you think we're gonna do, dump your pretty body into a landfill or something?"

Bea feels her blood chill at the morbid statement, her wild imagination flooding her mind with images of her pale legs sticking out of a dumpster, her neck snapped, chest streaked with blood. She squeezes her eyes shut in spite of the blindfold and clenches her fists to refrain from speaking again. _It's not getting you anywhere anyway…_

"Look," Matt says quietly into her ear, "I can tell you a little bit, but-"

"_Matt_."

A hot, raw pang of fear rips through Bea at the sound of Mello's voice, frigid and irate. Matt curses beneath his breath and tightens his grip on Bea's shoulder, leading her onward slowly. "Chill out already, I wasn't gonna tell her anything too important. She's freaking out over here, what do you expect me to do?"

Matt suddenly stops walking, causing Bea to shift so that she stood behind him. The chilled air bites at her bare arms and she wraps them around her chest, rubbing her palms furiously along her skin as she awaits whatever cruel retort Mello is cooking up.

"Fine," Mello says curtly, "then let me lead her."

Bea immediately snaps her head up, her eyes wild beneath her blindfold at the violent burst of both shock and disdain at his words, and as her mind begins to spin a plait of protestations and bitter threats that she knows she could never act out, Matt speaks instead. "Shit, man, you're acting like that'll calm her down or something. Just let me do it."

The hard clacking of boots against cement. Bea will grow so sickeningly used to that sound, she realizes, and she instinctively takes another step back at the sound of Mello growing closer. "You're just like her," Mello snarls, "taking this entire fucking thing as a joke."

Bea yelps as she feels Mello yank her into his grip, holding her relentlessly by the collar of her T-shirt. Her lips form a shaky "no", but the syllable is choked in her throat, crumpling up and dying out. "Let's go," he grumbles impatiently by her ear.

She can hear Matt muttering something irate beneath his breath with a click of his lighter, and she takes comfort in the fact that he is at least nearby, but it is canceled out cruelly with the sensation of Mello's harsh nails digging into her shoulder, his touch cold and like a steel claw as he leads her to a place unknown.

* * *

Matt is driving. Bea only knows this much because no new voices have reached her ears, Mello's hand is still clamped hatefully over her shoulder, and she is being driven away in a chilly car with her hands clasped on her lap.

"You know you can take your demon grip off her now, Mel, don't you?" Matt asks dryly from the driver's seat.

He makes a sharp turn and Bea, taken off guard, feels her weight shift heavily to the other side of the backseat and slam into Mello, whom makes an enraged sound in the back of his throat as he shoves her off of him. He says nothing in response to Matt, instead curses beneath his breath and does not return his hold of her shoulder, much to Bea's relief.

"It probably wouldn't hurt too much to take off that blindfold, too," Matt continues casually. "We're way past the warehouse anyway."

"There's nothing for her to see, Matt," Mello snaps.

"Then what's the harm in letting her off a little easy, Mel?"

Bea waits in a tense silence as Mello huffs out a quick, sharp breath. She prepares for a strike of sorts upon her face, or another shove, perhaps a series of obsenities just for the hell of it, but is surprised when he yanks the blindfold off her face. As if taking her first breath after being underwater, she looks around, bewildered, and sees her captor staring out the window grumpily into the early morning, Matt driving in the front seat, the street vacant of cars yet looming with a canopy of dying trees. A ghost town, complete with near-death foliage and not-quite-night sky. Four in the morning, she spots on the chronometer in the front of the car.

Yet she looks out the window with the wonder of a small child, propping her chin up on her hand, and tries to forget the fact that she is in a car with a young man that could potentially kill her and another that calls her "baby" and "princess", even though she has known him for less than a week. None of this exists when she lightly cracks open the window, closes her eyes, breathes in the scent of life outside the buzzing car.

But when she turns her head and sees that Mello's eyes are torrid upon her again, she remembers.

* * *

They park in a place that Bea knows better than to trust; an alley.

"Don't ask questions," Mello says the second that Bea opens her mouth. "We can't park in front of the house, so we're walking. Get out."

Bea bites her tongue and watches him get out of the car. She reaches for the door, but it is suddenly opened from the outside courtesy of Matt. He serves her a crooked grin and gives a small bow, but the charm of the moment is ruined when Mello begins speaking again.

"Don't make any scenes and don't bring attention to yourself," he explains gravely. He puts his leather gloves back on his hands, hiding the bruised knuckles that Bea has not noticed until now, and keeps his crystal eyes on her. "And when we get to the house, don't make a sound. I'll make sure you won't make another sound again if you even try. Got it?"

_Do I have any other choice than to get it? _

Nevertheless, Bea nods, still biting hard upon her tongue, the muscle screaming around the harsh clamping of her teeth. A soft touch on her back and she whips around, startled.

Matt stands behind her, lighting a cigarette with a goofy grin on his face. He truly is handsome, Bea notes even in the darkness, but she wishes she could see his eyes instead of those grotesque orange plastic lenses of his goggles. Still, she gives him a slight smile, her mood wrecked by the dismal air around her and Mello's threat, but his touch trails down to in between her shoulderblades as he walks away. "Come on, _ma petite fleur_," he croons, beckoning her with a wave of his arm. He takes a cool puff of his cigarette and grins over his shoulder at her. "Or do you want me to hold your hand this time, too?"

"Shut up, Matt," Mello barks with a whip of his head. He looks back at Bea, cold and restless, as Matt chuckles and gazes up at the sky. "Get up here. This isn't your chance to run off, Beatrice."

Her heart skips a beat, slows, and picks up again at the awful sound of him using her name. It does not hold the same endearment that Matt would have used, instead twisting and coiling into the unadulterated sound of loathing and distaste once it had slithered from his tongue. But he is looking at her with an impatience that she lacks the energy to test, and quickly shuffles up to the pair with her eyes avoiding both of them. She knows better than to be reminded of Matt's charm and Mello's hate in one collective rush, and walks between the two as the sky darkens and greys above their heads.

The city around them is bleak and rusted with age, and while it looks faintly familiar, Bea's mind is too wrapped around the fact that both boys' shoulders keep brushing into hers, sandwiching her between the two, and whether or not it is intentional, it is unnerving.

She hears Mello sigh as they come to a stop. "You forgot the jacket, didn't you, Matt."

"Aw, shit," Matt mutters as he flicks his ashes onto the sidewalk. "Guess I'll be back in a sec."

_He's leaving me here with him…? _

Indeed, he is, because Mello remains still with Bea at his side as Matt strolls away, one hand in his back pocket.

_Do I say something…? No, I shouldn't do that, he'd only snap at me in the end…just stand here and count the seconds until he gets back. One…two…three…_

"I can tell you this much," Mello suddenly says. His tone is hushed, but not gentle, which comes as no surprise for Bea. "We're taking you to your house."

Bea nearly chokes on her own breath as she turns to face him, but is held back by Mello's arm when he beats her to it. She is pressed back against the wall, but the shock has not eroded from her just yet. "Y-you're taking me back?" she breathes out, staring at him in disbelief. "I…I don't really know what to say, but-"

"We're not leaving you there." Mello's eyes sear into her with a quick turn of his head, and the intensity of his stare is still as heavy and relentless even when she can barely make it out. "The only reason we're taking you is to get a few things and to see if anyone is back. Don't get your hopes up."

The rush of happiness that made its debut in Bea's chest is quickly strangled until it withers back down into a dark swell of hatred for the boy before her. She says nothing as she watches him with a storm in her eyes.

"We're also trying to jog your memory of who was in the house before my group came for you," he continues. He looks back straight ahead, his gaze obscured by the thick shield of unwashed golden hair that hangs past his jawline. Bea stares at it with a contempt that both enthralls and frightens her. "Don't expect to be there long. If you can't give us any information, we're leaving once you get some things together. You should be thankful we're letting you do that much."

"Thankful?" Bea mouths to herself through furious lips. She presses her palms against the brick wall behind her to hold back from tearing either her hair out or Mello's.

_And you're already angry again…_

Mello begins to speak again, but Bea hears Matt returning from the sound of leisurely footsteps approaching. "Back in action," he says as he waves the jacket once in the air.

Bea is too enraged to even feel relief at his return; she will be going home, but only for a short time before being whisked away by her heartless captor and his green-eyed crooner, and god knows for how much longer…and this anger, this fine frenzy of _rage_ that she cannot fight off or ignore that comes with each glance towards Mello. Fucking Mello, fucking _fucking _Mello that shows nothing but hate no matter who he looks at, or who he is talking to, but Bea in particular, whom has done nothing but simply ask him _why._ Why she is here. Why she is away from home, being raped with questions about her father that she has nothing to respond with. Why he is such a mighty, overbearing little-

Matt is touching her again.

He has taken her gently by the shoulder so that she turns around, and is resting the jacket around her and smoothing it out along her shoulderblades. Bea stiffens, still washed in her own vehemence, because her eyes are not leaving Mello's profile.

_"Don't get your hopes up." _

"You alright, princess?" Matt asks her softly.

Mello begins walking again. "Let's go already, we're wasting time."

Bea's eyes are glued onto his back, and she hopes he feels the heat from her gaze, her disgust unfolding and blossoming like a putrid, black flower. There is no erasing it now; it has bloomed nicely into a bona fide abhorrence that she does not _want_ to fight off anymore. He has pushed her past her limits of kindness, her quiet dispositon wiped clean off her plate.

_No, princess is not alright. Princess finally feels the hate that her father always warned her about the world. Princess gets it, Mello, and she wants you to know that she hates you. I am no princess. But I _hate you_, Mello. I hate you. _

* * *

**By the way, Matt speaks French. Lol. He calls Bea "my little flower", just because I thought it would be kind of cute.**

**And I realize that this will soon turn into a love triangle…but those are much more fun anyway.**

**Reviews are appreciated!**


	6. Monster

**I think this was my favourite chapter to write. It turned out kind of smexy. Plus, it reminded me that this is essentially a MelloxOC fic. :D**

**BEGIN THE ANGST! FINALLY!**

**Don't own Death Note.**

* * *

None of the usual cars are in the stone driveway of Bea's home. The gate is locked shut, securing the three-story home within it like a bird in a cage, and the heavy drapes beyond the glass of the tall windows are drawn dismally closed.

Bea looks upon what was once her home in absolute defeat.

_It's…it's not right…no, there has to be someone in there…there'd be no reason for the place to be completely empty like this…_

Matt grabs hold of the top of the fence, spanning about a foot taller than his height. "It's not too tall to climb over," he observes with the butt of his cigarette dangling from his mouth. He pinches it free from his lips and exhales a small plume of smoke. "Mel can climb over first and then I'll help the little lady get over before I go. Sound sexy to you, man?"

Mello, however, has already taken on the task of climbing up the iron fence and swinging his legs over to the other side, landing like a cat, completely soundless. He shoots a bored look back at his companion, whom shrugs and throws the cigarette stub to the ground. Bea twists her lips into a scowl but distracts it with toying with a piece of hair that hangs out of order from the other strands. Her disbelief of the situation has not lessened in the slightest; instead, it is increasing with every second she is forced to be near the young man that put her in it in the first place, whom is currently scoffing at her from the other side of the fence.

"Get her over, Matt," Mello mutters before turning to face the lavish house with his arms crossed over his chest.

Bea catches Matt rolling his eyes as he flicks his lighter open and closed, the quick lick of a flame choked when the lid snapped down over it. "Someone's being a shit because they ran out of chocolate," he says beneath his breath.

Bea gives him a bewildered look. "What?"

Matt shakes his head in response, his grinning playing about his face now that she has addressed him. "Ah, forget it," he breathes out. "You ready to go ally-oop over the big ominous gate?"

Even though she is backing away from him, not liking where this is going in the least, he gives a little chuckle and hoists her up effortlessly from the ground, earning a startled yelp from her lips. He smells of tobacco and boy, the scent similar to an autumn campfire where the teenagers smoke and talk about sex until the moon erodes. Bea briefly debates in her mind whether or not this is a pleasant smell before he speaks again.

"Alright, princess, you ready?"

"N-no…!"

"Sweet."

He boosts her up suddenly, his hands beneath the soles of her shoes, and with a rush of both adrenaline and anxiety, Bea flails her hands out to catch onto the top of the fence, in which is dotted respectively with rounded grey peaks. Her eyes latch onto Mello's, whom is looking up at her with a droll sort of agitation up and over his shoulder.

For a moment, Bea amuses herself with the fact that she is above the ground while he has to look up at her, but the sudden feeling of Matt giving her an extra boost to launch her over the fence drags her out of the thought. Without thinking, she releases a wail of shock as she feels herself falling down to the ground, and prays she does not land on anything that will leave her bruised or paralyzed, when the exact opposite happens.

Mello has caught her. She is no longer falling to her doom (although the drop had only been a little over six feet), and she is pressed horribly against the object of her utmost contempt as if they are lovers, or even just casual friends, or anything besides enemies. Just to see if he is glaring at her as usual, she turns her head to look at him.

It is at this exact moment that Bea realizes that he is quite striking. Disgustingly so, in fact. He is a form of stunning that Bea never longs to touch, because it is so cold and distant that she could never see there be anything but that fact that he is indeed striking. It is a loveless sort of attractive, and she doubts that Mello knows this himself for a second, but remembers that he is a cocky little bastard and amends that notion quickly.

But she is thrown off by how sudden this observation is. He has hopped straight out of a glossy glamour magazine with his cheekbones and scowling lips and stupidly untidy hair and knocked Bea off the ledge of saying anything to him. Not that she had planned on it to begin with; he would only respond with either another ferocious tug of her hair or a series of curses and insults that would leave her seeing red.

He is not handsome like Matt. In a syrupy romance novel that Bea once snuck out of her aunt's room to read, she had seen and learned the word "smoldering" for the first time. With a hateful biting of her bottom lip as he emotionlessly sets her on her feet, she drops this word under the slot labeled "Mello", in which also has the words "cruel", "kidnapper" and "never, no matter under what circumstance, trust this person with your life".

* * *

Of course, her duo of kidnappers contains a skilled lockpicker. It is such a cliché that Bea has to stifle a manic laugh.

Matt is singing softly to himself as he searches for the tumbler within the front door's lock, his only tool an odd metal pin with numerous other pins skewering out of it, and his goggles are atop his head now. In a way, Bea is relieved to see his eyes again (they remind her of seaglass, green and foggy after being swept up from the tide), yet equally disturbed to know that this is _her _house they are trying to break into.

Judging by the grin that cracks on Matt's face, he has found the tumbler successfully. Bea does her usual routine of standing by, mouth agape, eyes wide and alarmed as he swings open the front door and peers his auburn head into the living room. When Bea tries to follow him in, Mello's arm shoots out and stops her short. "Stay back," he orders.

_But this is _my_…!_

"I know this is your house," Mello growls, stealing away her boiling thought without having to ask. "But don't be stupid and just assume that no one is in there armed."

Bea knows better than to ask questions, since she has annoyed him well enough by now, but the idea of another stranger (or worse yet, a member of her family) waiting for an intruder and prepared with a fully-loaded weapon inside her own home makes her stomach lurch. Matt leans back and glances over his shoulder at Mello. He gives him a little nod, but reaches into his jacket and pulls out exactly what Bea has been fearing: a sleek, gleaming silver Deagle. The gun is immaculate and looks out of place with the boy, yet he cocks it with an efficiency that tells Bea he has used it before. She would not like to imagine what he has used it on; the idea makes her wipe her clammy palms off on her thighs, growing nervous.

"Mel, I suggest you get your pretty one out, too." Matt takes a step into the house and brushes his hair out of his eyes before pulling the goggles back over them. "Can't let our lovely lady getting beat up again."

Bea feels a scarlet glaze heat her cheeks at his words, but it cools when Mello scowls and pulls out his own gun. She watches in trepidation as he glances at her bitterly out the corner of his eye, cocking it in the same fashion as Matt had. "Don't get in the way," he tells her. He turns his back to her and holds his gun down by his side.

"Just stay behind me, baby," Matt whispers back to Bea. "I used to always want to be the hero of the story."

_And I bet Mello always wanted to be the villain,_ Bea thinks as she walks up the porch to stand behind Matt, smelling that campfire scent again as 4:30 in the morning approaches.

* * *

The tears come in a sort of queasy charge once she gets to her room with Matt by her side. Her bed is unmade, just as she left it, and the wonderfully familiar smell of cotton and jasmine soap brings a fresh bout of nostalgia to sweep across Bea's fragile mind.

Matt is occupied in idly snooping through her closet, gliding his fingertips along the array of pastel skirts and sweaters. "Damn, you sure have it better off than I did. You guys are loaded…"

Bea barely hears him through her own distractions; the creamy white comforter crumpled at the end of her bed, the fine layer of dust laying atop the bureau, the almost indistinguishable dent in the wall just above the bed's headboard from when they had rearranged her furniture. It is all so real before her that if Matt was not behind her with a gun in his grip, she could forget that any of this is happening at all.

"Hey, sorry to rush you and all, but you really need to get some stuff together before Big Mean Mello comes up and beheads us, you know?" Matt rifles lightly through her wardrobe again before moving to sit on her bed, laying back and resting his free hand on his stomach. "And you sure do have a shit load of clothes, by the way."

There is a second where Bea just looks at him, wondering where this boy comes from, why he associates with such people like Mello at all, what he wants out of life, but her energy is too depleted to question him as she numbly searches for a bag to throw clothes into. As Matt continues talking, she finds a canvas tote that she picks up before walking to her bureau.

"Weird how no one else is in here, though," Matt says casually. "You'd think that at least one person would be on the lookout in case of something like this, don't you think?"

Bea opens the top drawer and grabs a handful of underclothes, her eyes on the wall as she throws them into the bag. "I don't know where they went," she says in a soft monotone.

The squeak of the bed tells Bea that Matt has sat up, stood up off the bed. "Hey," he says quietly, his footsteps approaching her, "I, uh…yeah, I know I'm not all too great at making things better, but…"

"Then tell me," Bea whispers as she squeezes her eyes shut, bowing her head. "Tell me why I'm with you and Mello. Tell me why my father is all that he asks me about."

She turns around to face him now, a quick, whipping action that seems to surprise him, judging by the way he backs up, shoulders stiffening. "And tell me why you insist on helping _him_ all he wants when you won't even let me know a single thing every time I ask!"

This is new. She is angry with Matt. She is _furious_ with him.

No…no, that is not quite right. She is angry at only the thought of Matt, because when he slowly reaches up to his goggles and pulls them off his eyes, resting them on his forehead, it softens the searing edges of her frustration until it is just a dull thudding in her chest. He is looking at her with a sort of sympathy that is not quite conventional, but seems sincere enough to suffice. "Mello and I have history," he says quietly. "I've known him since I was a kid, back when I was poor as shit and not too well off. Black and blue from the head down. I didn't just meet him yesterday. I can't turn on him like a rat, not like other people probably would."

Bea stares at him with a swelling in her chest that is not exactly guilt, but not exactly understanding either. It is something that is triggered by that look on his face that she has not seen until now, that look of loyalty battling with instinct to tell her what she needs to know.

"I can't," Matt repeats, shrugging his shoulders and fishing his free hand into his pocket. "And he's doing this…he's doing this for a reason. He's not a monster. If he was, he would have taken you and twisted you up until you couldn't move anymore." Their eyes meet again. Bea is swept under his words, soaking them in quietly but not entirely trusting them. His voice is lower now, hushed, his eyes shifting to the floor. "If you knew where all this money your father made to get this house, you'd never believe me anyway."

"Then what's the harm in telling me?" Bea asks weakly. "If I don't believe it, then you lose nothing."

The look on Matt's face tells her that she has made a point, but he does not meet her eyes again. "Leave that part to Mello," he mutters. "It's better that he does it. I'd only fuck it up."

"No," Bea objects quickly, reaching out to him. She grazes his shoulder as he turns away, pulling his attention back to her reluctantly. "You don't know that. You don't know if you'd mess anything up."

"I know a lot, Bea," Matt says, his tone oddly dark for his normally lazy disposition. It causes Bea's hand to drop from his shoulder, looking upon him with both hurt and incredulity that he _still_ has a wall put up against her questions. No matter how many times she beats against it, it will not crumble, and she is left on the other side of it, staring up and wondering if it will ever come down for her.

So she resorts to turning around and trying to find her calm as she gathers more clothes for her bag. Her hands give her away completely, though; they tremble and grow cold in her sweeping of emotions that dominate her mind, yet somehow she manages to fill the bag with her necessities without a single glance back to him.

* * *

They meet up with Mello in the kitchen ten minutes later. The blonde is bent over and rooting through the cabinets feverishly, his gun sticking out of the back pocket of his black jeans. Bea stops in her tracks as Matt snorts out a laugh and strolls leisurely over to where his comrade stands. "You know, gluttony is one of the seven sins. People go to hell for it every day," he quips with a dripping sarcasm.

Mello shoots an annoyed glance over his shoulder at him, but goes back to ruffling through the cabinet. "Don't pull that with me, Matt," he mumbles. "You don't believe in that anyway."

As Matt shrugs and lights another cigarette, Bea spots something dangling from Mello's neck. A strand of red beads, the gleaming cross-pendant grazing his abdomen. A…_rosary? _

Why she is so taken back that this boy, so full of seething hatred for seemingly everything that moves, wears a rosary…she prefers to not think about it, and follows her own advice in wondering what the hell he is doing in her kitchen, tearing through her cabinets like an animal.

"Do they have any?" Matt asks Mello, looking up at the ceiling as he exhales a glorious curl of smoke.

_Any what…?_

Ironically enough, her answer hits her when Mello emerges with a single item in his hand that she was not expecting him to be searching for: a chocolate bar, already unwrapping it devilishly. He is muttering something that sounds remotely like, "I was about to fire a fucking bullet into something if they didn't…"

Matt is chuckling quietly to himself, but Bea watches in a confused awe as Mello leans against the counter, tips his head back and bites the corner of the chocolate off with a hard snap. He releases a groan of satisfaction before chewing the candy and downing it. Bea swears his eyes roll to the back of his head when he takes another bite, a reaction that she is unsure of whether to look away from or watch and wonder what drawls out such a result from him. Besides, it is just _chocolate…_

"Rest of the house is empty," Mello says through another mouthful. His head is still lolling lazily back, but his shoulders are slumped forward, as if the chocolate has drained the energy out of him. "Fucking _empty_."

"Well, better than if someone actually showed up," Matt responds. "Not really in the carnage mood right now."

Bea's eyes have caught sight of something interesting yet maddening at the same time: a faint trail of darker blonde hair spanning down from Mello's navel, exposed as he arches his back to crack a stiff vertebrae. She does not _want _to look at it, but it is like a train crash, one that she cannot tear her eyes away from because it as disheartening and awful as it is, it is _interesting_, and the dark side of her is drawn to things that she knows she should avoid.

The train crash is gone. Mello has straightened his back, standing up fully as he strides over to look out the window with a bored expression on his disgustingly striking face, still eating his chocolate bar with the luxury of a prince.

"_He's not a monster. If he was, he would have taken you and twisted you up intil you couldn't move anymore."_

Bea drops her bag quietly to the floor and slides down the wall to sit on the floor, closing her eyes and resting her head on her knees.

_"Leave that part to Mello. It's better that he does it…"_

_And how the hell would it be better, Matt? You didn't tell me that…maybe because you don't even know why. Maybe I'm expecting too much out of you…no, but you can't be just like him, surely…you can't be-_

In a rush of sound and a harsh tug on her shirt, Bea is suddenly yanked up from the floor by Matt and collected in his arms in a little bundle. She releases a petrified scream when she catches sight of a group of three strangers, clad in all black and pointing their guns at Matt and Mello. "Get him down!" one of them orders, jerking their head in Matt's direction, but the addressed boy is sprinting away with Bea curled against his chest, high off of adrenaline.

"Matt, get her out of here!" Mello hollers from behind the counter, his eyes bright and wild upon the band of strangers that are preparing to fire. In the flurry of movement, Bea briefly sees him aiming his gun at the assailants with a grace that defies the situation at hand, but Matt flings open the front door and flits down the steps into the faint light of five in the morning. Bea struggles for him to free her, the intense burst of energy coursing through her legs now, but Matt holds her tighter against him as they make a break for the fence.

The sound of gunshots pierces her eardrums, and Bea feels a thick surge of nausea rise in her throat. "W-what about-"

"Sorry, babe, but you're gonna have an ugly landing when I get you over this fence," Matt interrupts, his voice hoarse and breathy from the stretch he has been sprinting.

"I don't _care_, what about Mello?" she orders with a strength that she does not expect to leave her lips.

As Matt sets her down on the ground before the fence, he stuffs his own gun into his pocket and gives her a sardonic glance of his green eyes. "Thought you didn't give a damn about Mello, huh?"

Bea lets him pick her up again and hike her up the fence again, lets her hands grip onto the rounded peaks atop each column, lets her legs swing around without so much as a second's hesitation, feels the sharp stinging to her ankles when she lands and topples over. Standing up quickly to see Matt scuttling over the fence like a cat before dropping down, she brushes her palms off on her sweatpants and mutters, "I don't."

* * *

A few minutes after the two start the journey back to the car, Bea hears another pair of footsteps come from behind them. Matt catches onto them as well and whips around at the same time that Bea does.

Mello, pale-faced and slinking out of the faint fog of the early morning, his gloved hand shaking with its grip of the gun. In his other hand, the plastic bag of clothes that Bea had left behind in the panic.

There is an odd mixture of relief, anger, disbelief, and acute numbness as Bea follows Matt in walking towards him, meeting him halfway. Relief because it had not been him that was shot, anger because it had not been him that was shot, disbelief that he had remembered the bag, and the numbness because if Mello has made it out of the house without so much as a scratch, it means that he had to have shot someone in order to escape.

_But who were they…? Was it him that fired those gunshots, or did he just run…? _

"Damn, and just when I was about to buy the roses for your grave, man." Matt claps his hand upon Mello's shoulder, but the boy shrugs him off, a shifty look to his cold blue eyes. "Hey, you alright, Mel?" Matt asks.

When Mello's anomalous gaze falls upon Bea, she immediately takes a step back, preparing to hear a long, angry ramble about how this scenerio is entirely her fault and that he should just shoot her dead while he has the chance, but instead, Mello simply throws her the plastic bag and stalks off ahead of her and Matt.

She sees that his hands are still trembling, twitching as he replaces his gun in his back pocket.

_Is he…scared? _

When Mello passes by the alley that the car is parked in, Matt calls up to him, "Hey, man, the car is this way-"

"I'm bringing the girl with me," Mello responds sharply. "You take the car and stock up on a few things with the money I gave you. Meet us on the corner of 24th Street in about 45 minutes, got it?"

Without further questioning, Matt gives him a brief nod before turning up the collar of his jacket and heading off for the car down the alley, leaving a suddenly floored and wide-eyed Bea with the young man that may have just shot three men.

And he is staring at her with that atypical look to his eyes again, as if he finds her both repulsive and interesting at the same time. Still, it is a chilling glare that she has not yet been able to shake off each time it is set on her, and she follows suit in glancing down at her hands to ease the tension.

"Did you know any of those guys back there?"

She still does not look up. "No," she says, barely above a whisper, "none of them."

"Are you lying?"

There is a storm in her eyes when she lifts her head to look at him straight in the eye, even if just for a moment. She sees Mello purse his lips and harden his gaze upon her before turning away and beckoning her to follow with a jerk of his head. "Alright, then," he mutters. "Let's take a walk."

"What?" she blurts out. It is such a casual statement that it does not belong coming from him. "With you?"

Mello keeps his back to her, but she sees his shoulders stiffen. "Is there some sort of issue with that, girl?"

Would he truly care if there was? Bea knows that he would not, and bites upon her bottom lip as she catches up with him. "Fine," she mumbles.

Their walk is silent but tense; she can feel it wrapping around her throat each time she tries to clear it or distract herself. The occasional, searching glances she sends over to him bring her nothing but that horrid reminder that no matter how cruel he comes off, there is still no denying the fact that the way that the bleak sunlight of morning tints his skin, he is a stunning piece of work. His eyes are narrowed, as usual, but glow a bright cerulean when the light hits them, and his jawline is almost feminine, but still holds a strong edge that is unquestionably masculine when he clenches the muscles around it in agitation.

When suddenly, he speaks.

"I'm not going to be light with you on this," he says. "If you want to know why you're here so badly, I'm not going to beat around it, alright? You're getting it straight."

He has her attention immediately.

"Your father used to work for me."

Bea feels something rise in her throat and she hacks out a cough, nearly choking on her own shock. "M-my father-"

"Don't talk," Mello orders, "or else I'm not telling you shit."

And in spite of the bubbling questions and frustrated scream that begs to be let loose, Bea pins her lips shut and listens.

"Your father," Mello continues, "had some business going with my group back at the warehouse. He was in charge of getting some information in regards to…to something that we've been trying to get a hold of for a very long time. Something that I _need_."

_N-no…not my father…he worked at a loan company, not with Mello and that awful gang of men back there…he must be lying, or joking, or-_

"But then he quit on us without telling anyone," Mello explains, his tone considerably darker. "He quit on us at a time where I need all the useful people I can get. My whole reputation depends on this, _everything._ And just when I thought we were close to getting what I need, he decided to leave. That's where you come into play."

He looks at her now, narrow-eyed, heavy. Bea cannot look away; as Mello speaks of reputations and her father and gangs, she has her mind spinning a wheel of questions that she keeps track of as he slowly answers them.

"You say you can't remember barely anything before you woke up at the warehouse. That tells me that your father knew this was going to happen, that we were going to take the initiative to collect you in order to get to him."

He leads her around a bend in the sidewalk, walking slightly faster now. Bea follows close beside him, looking around them for anyone to overhear. The street is empty, however, and she tunes into him again.

"So they blanked out your memory before we came for you so that you wouldn't tell us anything about where they went. It was all for their safety, not yours, because not even his own daughter knows where he went off to." He sends her a dirty look, the muscles of his jaw taut. "Which means neither do I."

She has nothing to say in response to such a blunt statement, but the shock of what she is hearing aids in that as well. _My father…he left me when he knew that they were going to kidnap me? This can't be right…I already told myself not to trust anything Mello says, and this is no different…but if he was lying, then how do I explain no one in my family being in my house?_

"But I can't very well drop you off somewhere and get rid of you," Mello breathes out. "That wouldn't help us at all. I don't know how long it'll take for your memory to come back, if it even will at all, but if it does, then you may be some use to us in finding your father."

"Some use to you?" Bea repeats, stunned by his word choice. She does not plan this question; it simply floats out of her mouth as her hands begin to shake. "Is that what this is all about?"

That hurricane-like flash has returned to Mello's glare. "Don't start complaining. You begged and pleaded me to tell you what was going on, and that's how it is, period. There's no pretty way for me to word it for you. You're here because your father fucked up something that my entire name depends o-"

Before she can control it, Bea's hand flies out in a flurry of white-hot rage, preparing to strike that cocky, beautiful face until it is a hot, raw scarlet. Just before it meets his cheek, Mello catches it by the wrist and gives it a harsh, painful squeeze. This fresh burst of pressure against her wrist drags her out of her infuriated stupor, and she looks at him with that same dull, thudding afterglow of diluted anger.

And he is smiling at her.

_No…that's not a smile…_

It is a dark, cruel smirk, one that shadows over his entire face with its gravity, with that one corner of his mouth curled up like a devious cat. His hair falls like a dirty, ragged curtain over one eye, but the other is glittering upon her as he releases a huff of a laugh.

"You think you can hurt me?" he asks softly. "Do you really think _you_ can hurt me?"

She is growing numb from her fingers up to elbow, and even though she desperately tries to wriggle away, his grip is like an iron bracket around her wrist. Their eyes are locked, the receiving end of the grip beginning to waver on her feet from that dreadful smirk, because even in the midst of being terrified of what he is going to do to her in the next few seconds, she still is left to acknowledge that he is fucking _glorious _in the light.

"You never will," Mello hisses out, that one blue eye completely hooking her in its hold. "You don't know who I am. You don't know what I'm capable of doing, Beatrice."

_Stop saying my name._

It happens again: she speaks without thinking.

"And you don't know me," she whispers, trying to hide the tremor in her voice. If she is going to talk to this boy, she is going to be strong about it, no matter how much she wishes to bow her head and forget.

That smirk is washed off Mello's face so quickly that Bea gives a start, quickly containing herself so as to not appear weak next to this beast.

_"He's not a monster."_

_No, but he's at least a demon…_

Mello suddenly throws her hand to the side, turning sharply on his heel. "Follow if you want. I don't give a shit anymore." To add to the effect of his words, he waves her off with his hand as he slinks away. "I was stupid to think you'd be any use to us in the first place."

His words do not quite sting as much as Bea expects them to (if it is possible to become used to cruelty, she thinks she has succeeded in doing so), and she watches him with the aftermath of the swelling of energy that had erupted within her chest once she finally spoke to him. She has _challenged_ him, and he has walked away.

She can almost feel a smile blossoming as she begins trailing behind him, a few feet's distance between them, and decides that she refuses to make his job that easy for him.

* * *

**Oh, helloooooo angst. ::waves::**

**Little side note, I know the summary says that Mello saves Bea's life and that's when the big wheel starts turning, but this isn't exactly it, lol. Think of this as a precursor to that. **

**Reviews are greatly appreciated!**


	7. Coward

**I'll warn you now: there is some sexual content in this chaptah. Well, kind of. **

**Don't own Death Note. Leave that to Obata and Ohba. ::worships::**

* * *

Bea somehow sleeps on the ride back to the warehouse. In spite in Matt's reckless turns and the window being cracked open to let in the chilly morning air, and even though Mello sits only three feet away from her, scowling out the window and skillfully ignoring her existence, Bea sleeps.

The fortune teller returns to her dreams, with her analogies and shifty eyes within that rusted carnival that she just wants to _forget_, and she wakes up to see that they have pulled over to the side of the road. It is raining so heavily that she cannot see out the window, the virtual opposite to the bleak, soft morning that she had abandoned for slumber, and Matt is not in the car.

A look to her side and she sees that Mello is gone, too.

Bea straightens up so quickly that her head smacks against the side of the window, and she groans and rubs the sore spot as she looks around frantically for the two. _They've left me here…they waited until I was asleep and then they pulled over and left me here…wait, no. No, they wouldn't do that, it's pouring outside. If they really wanted to get rid of me they would have just thrown me out of the car and kept driving, not leave me in the backseat…_

She leans forward, her head throbbing angrily, and sees that the keys are still in the ignition, leading her to release a heavy sigh of relief as she sits back in the seat. _Alright, they wouldn't be stupid enough to leave me with a car _and_ the keys. Now, stop freaking out before you-_

Her thoughts are violently disconnected when there is a sudden slam against the window to her left. Flying back in her seat with a scream, she sees the figure of Matt crushed against the surface, his cheek and palms flat against the glass. Just as Bea feels her heart nearly stop, she can make out the image of him backing up and bending down to grin at her through the rain-streaked window before opening the door. He is drenched through his shirt, his hair pasted over his head in a dark heap, and he pulls up his goggles to look her in the eye.

"How's that for acting, baby?" he asks as he reaches out and ruffles a trembling Bea's hair, wetting it with his dripping hand. "Am I up to your level yet?"

Bea clutches her chest, her eyes wired open at the still-present fright of his joke. "You…don't you _ever…_" She shakes her order off, realizing that Matt's free spirit would go against it anyway regardless of how serious she is about it. "What's going on?" she asks instead. "Why are we pulled over?"

Matt scratches the back of his head and rests his hand on the top of the car, staring off to his side and squinting from the rain. "Just a flat," he says casually. "Pretty shit timing, though. I look like a wet dog and Mel's not talking to anyone but himself, so…"

"He's talking to himself?" Bea repeats. She turns around in her seat to look out the back window, but the sheet of rain is too heavy to see through, so she looks back at Matt with wary concern. "He's not going to…?"

Matt tilts his head for a moment before shaking his head quickly, catching on to her anxiety. "It's just his usual routine of cussing up a hurricane," he says, his voice dropping as he leans closer to Bea. "I told you, he gets pissy when things don't go his way. He's not gonna blow your head off or anything."

"That's not what I was thinking."

_That's exactly what I was thinking._

"Yeah, yeah," Matt drones, that lazy smile teasing her again. "If he's gonna blow anyone's head off, it's gonna be mine since I'm slacking. Not really feeling tire changing right now…"

Bea clears her throat and begins to speak, but is cut short when Mello comes into view, storming past Matt with his head bowed low. "You never feel like doing much of anything, Matt," he snaps before whipping open the door to the driver's seat. He looks like a fallen god in the rain, Apollo, a rush of sopping gold atop his head hanging in dripping tendrils over face, and the look in his eyes (they are so blue that they almost sting Bea when she meets them) holds such a rawness that she finds herself recoiling in her seat, breathless.

Matt rolls his eyes and looks over to Mello. "In that case, let me actually do something and drive," he quips. "You know you drive like shit when you're in a mood."

Bea expects an explosion from the soaking young man, but instead Mello simply shoots him a venomous look before sitting before the wheel and slamming the door shut, leaving Matt to wave him off tiredly and walk around to the passenger's side. She closes her door and watches the two, in an odd, watery daze, as Matt toys with his lighter again and Mello rams the key into the ignition. The world around her seems to be nothing more than a picture book as she rests her head back on the seat, feeling her limbs begin to grow heavy.

_None of this…makes any sense to me right now…_

Not caring if a callous demand is thrown at her, Bea shifts the seatbelt behind her shoulder and lays down in the backseat, her eyelids falling shut. She is not tired; she is simply _heavy_, the shock of the past hour sinking into her joints like hot tar. She can see Mello's shoulders stiffen as he reaches for the clutch, but surprisingly serves her no icy command to sit up. As he pumps the car into motion with a firm pressing of the gas pedal, Bea lets her mind break down for as long as it needs to and watches the flame of Matt's lighter come to life, die, come to life, die, a morbid clock that is rewound over and over again before her wired eyes.

* * *

"_Beatrice…it rings of safety. The need for…protection, security."_

_"I don't know where she gets it from, but the girl is wonderful at the piano…! She surprised us all at Harry's wedding, just eight years old and playing the way she did…"_

_"Can you fight, Beatrice?"_

_"You think you can hurt me?"_

_"He's always so busy with work, he barely even calls home anymore…and of course Bea worries herself sick, the little worry-wort…"_

_"You really think _you_ can hurt me?" _

_"…yes."_

* * *

She is not asleep, but is somehow being woken up.

The cold voice of Mello snaps her out of her daze like a splash of ice water against her face. "Snap out of it," he orders. "We need to get a few things in here."

Bea sits up and ignores his face leering over her like a cryptic mask from the open door of the car. Before asking where they are, she takes a bleary look around and sees that they are in the parking lot of a tired old convenience store, and that the sun is in full bloom over the town. The storm has ended, but she does not know how long she has been under her haze of thought. Nevertheless, she clears her throat and avoids the boy's eyes as she gets out of the car, her joints stiff from the crumpled position she had assumed before. "What time is it?" she asks hoarsely.

_And why are we stopping for more things…? Didn't Matt already take care of that before…?_

Mello scoffs, ensuring that his gun is secure and concealed in the front of his pants with a pat of his hand. "And what's it to you?"

"I just want to know," Bea responds a notch harder than she had intended. She is too weary to feel remorse, however, and smoothes out her soiled hair with her palm without so much as a frown on Mello's behalf.

"Six o'clock, sugar," Matt calls out from a few feet away with a wave of his hand. He is fiddling with something that he has pulled from his pocket, and with another glance, Bea sees that it is his cell phone. Her mind shifts into high gear at the sight of it. _He has a phone…that means that Mello can't be too careful with how I might get a hold of someone outside that warehouse…but he probably won't give me that chance, knowing him, knowing the situation he's gotten me into…oh, _damn_ him!_

"Come on," Mello mutters, "we have things to take care of, and we can't be fooling around in here for too long." He runs a hand through his damp hair and gives it a shake, droplets of rain falling to the deaths onto the cement ground. Sending a glance over his shoulder, he asks, "You got me, Matt? No fooling arou-"

"Yeah, yeah, I got you," Matt says with a heavy boredom, crushing the butt of his cigarette beneath his shoe. He meets Bea's eye and shoots her his tell-tale grin. "You got him, Bea? No fooling around."

The sarcasm-dipped statement would normally coax a smile to form about Bea's drooping lips, but her mind is occupied with another inquiry as she turns to Mello. "Wait," she says timidly, "is it really a good idea to have me seen in public when I've probably been reported missing by now? I mean, if someone sees me in here-"

"Don't even bother," Mello interjects. "This is coming from a girl with the family that went M.I.A. instead of tracking you down."

As Bea stands, mouth agape and blood chilling, Mello begins walking away slowly, his horribly beautiful face contorted into something that is not quite a smirk, not quite a frown.

"No one's reported you, Beatrice. You're as missing as you ever were before we got you."

And his voice is like rippling, cruel velvet as Bea is rooted to the ground, stricken, vision going blurry like a hot fog.

* * *

Cigarettes. Chocolate. Coffee. Ball-point pens.

Scissors. Dark brown hair dye.

It only takes about four seconds for Bea to get the point as she watches their small parade of items be rung up one by one.

* * *

The warehouse, worn and grey and tucked in the rugged outskirts of the city, seems even more ominous than before as Mello drives up to it. Like a frightened puppy peeking out of a kennel cage, Bea bows her head and stares out the window with round, watering eyes (she really wishes she would stop this crying business already, but it is too late to slap it away), and welcomes that familiar sinking feeling dragging her heart down to her toes, useless and dead.

When Matt seemingly spots the darkness in her eyes as she exits the car, he taps her lightly on the shoulder and smiles at her. "Hey, at least Mel let you go without the blindfold on the way back, right?" he tries, shrugging his shoulders carelessly.

_How do you do it? How do you follow him the way you do, Matt…?_

She follows the duo of kidnappers into the warehouse through a large steel door, in which Mello has unlocked and quickly seals shut again upon their entrance. That same cold corridor, the same metallic sound of Mello's boots clacking against the cement floor, the same dread that consumes Bea's mind as she follows it mindlessly. It is all the same as before, except she is weaker and filled to the brim with unbelievable information as to just why the hell she is here. She had left alarmed and clueless, and has returned weighed down and stunned out of words.

_Your father left you. Your father left you. You whole _family_ left you._

She knows he is lying.

Or, at least, _hopes_ he is lying.

Matt and Mello begin talking quietly, which Bea picks up with a vague interest. It gives her something else to listen to besides the rushing in her ears.

"It's not gonna take long for someone to report her, Mel," Matt explains softly. "She's a cute girl, she probably had a bunch of friends and shit that are going to be wondering sooner or later where she is."

"I said they no one had reported her _yet_," Mello responds, his voice hushed for once. "That's why we got this." He raises the plastic bag in his hands that contains their purchases and sends a fleeting glance back to Bea, to which she counters with a blank stare. "Hey," he says, a notch louder than before, "what school do you attend?"

Her voice is a dull monotone, as lifeless as the stare she gives him. "Agoura Hills Academy for Girls."

"An all girls school," Matt breathes out dreamily. "Damn…"

Mello ignores his comment and gives a sharp little nod in Bea's direction, then mutters something to his comrade that she does not pick up. She does not care all too much to pick it up anyway; her mind is hazy and cluttered with strings of words and sounds that do not connect, instead floating around taking up space without contributing anything to her mood except a pulsating darkness, and one cold, quivering realization: _This is all his fault._

* * *

Bea cannot be bothered wondering what the commotion outside the door of her prison is all about. She knows, however, that there is much yelling, laughing, clanking, the familiar sounds of cursing and the tabs of beer cans snapping off, as if there is a party that she has not been invited to (_thank god_, she briefly thinks).

Above all else, though, she hears Mello's footsteps approaching the door, and she braces herself for whatever lethal news he has for her.

There is a chocolate bar hanging from his mouth; this is the first thing she notices when he opens the heavy door. The second thing is that instead of looking hostile, he just looks _bored_, perhaps even tired as he heaves a sigh behind his mouthful of chocolate. She will not ask what is wrong. Such a question with him is practically elementary. If she is to ask anything, it should be what is _right_, since the wrong seems to constantly outweigh it, thus making it the underdog of his rampant emotions.

Matt is not with him. Bea has a disheartening image of him cracking open a beer with the others outside the door, grinning and cracking jibes, but decides against it and shakes the thought off.

She is trying to find something to think about besides how long Mello is staring at her, not speaking a word.

_What's he…? He just comes in here and…god, he makes less and less sense every time I see him…_

He is taking too long to speak, so Bea does it for him. "Mello?" she asks, masking her impatience with soft inquiry.

Something sparks in those eyes, then falls flat again as he releases another sigh, biting off the corner of his chocolate coarsely. "I suppose you want to get a shower by now, don't you," he says monotonously.

Bea feels her stomach give a lurch. Oh, she does not like this mood he is in, not one bit; this dry, cold demeanor that is nothing like his usual fire, nothing like the bawdy, vulgar arrogance that she never thought she would wish would rear its ugly head in him again. Just when she has grown used to _that_ Mello, _this _one appears, throwing off all of her expectations and flinging itself right in her face in an effort to force her to understand him again. The very thought of having to comb through more mannerisms of his makes her dizzy, like sifting through sand for gold or digging for diamonds, trying to find something good hidden in there.

"Well?" he cuts in. "Why are you being so quiet all of a sudden? Answer me."

She will have to take her chances, she decides as she toys with a strand of her now-greasy hair. "Yeah," she responds, "yeah, I guess that would make me feel better."

She hears him snort, and has a feeling that _that_ Mello is returning with gusto. "Feel better," he repeats, mocking her.

For some unreasonable reason, Bea snaps her head up, her mood shifting at such an impossibly quick rate that she has succeeded in alarming _herself._ She knows that she has managed to startle Mello, even if just for a moment, because she sees his eyes widen minutely before they return to their prior indifferent state, this time narrowed a fraction. "Whatever," he mutters, "just get up and follow me."

"As usual," Bea mumbles bitterly beneath her breath as she stands up.

Mello's glare is searing _(as usual again, _she notes_)_ when he pushes open the door, looking at her over his shoulder. "Watch it," he hisses. "I don't intend on dealing with your little comments right now, got it? You're lucky I'm letting you do this much."

"Is it the polite thing to do to thank your kidnapper, then?"

It leaves her mouth before she can swallow it back down into the recesses of her other unspoken thoughts, and yet the remorse does not greet her like it normally does. Instead, she feels that raw energy pump its life into her system again, just as it had when she had attempted to slap him before, and increases a tenfold when she meets that gaze again.

And that smirk, that dark, looming curl of his lips, has painted itself onto his face with an elegance that is, in short, both breathtaking and abysmal. Yet Bea does not waver; while on the inside, her stomach drops again, her heart stalls for a chilling second, her exterior is solid, unyielding.

As Mello turns back around and leads her down the cold corridor for the third time, she finds that she is beginning to like this side of herself. It makes life much easier when you are not afraid of your own potential.

* * *

_Why isn't he leaving?_

"Mello?"

"_What._"

_He can't honestly be serious._

The bathroom is surprisingly clean for the rest of the state of the warehouse. There is no bathtub, instead only a single-stall shower with a panel of sliding glass for the door, and although the walls are slightly grimy and the tiling could use a washing, Bea is pleasantly stunned to not find forgotten corpses in the medicine cabinet, heads of enemies and bones of god-knows-what in the sink drawers.

But Mello is not leaving. In fact, he has come into the bathroom with her instead of waiting outside and has closed the door, pinning them both in a disturbingly tight room that only three people at the most could squeeze into. He looks at her with that slow-burning irritation as she presses her back against the glass door of the shower, trying to make sense of why he is not letting her be.

"I need to…get a shower?" she repeats slowly, as if it has slipped the boy's mind completely.

"I'm not stopping you," Mello retorts with an unreadable look on his face. He leans against the door of the bathroom and crosses his arms over his chest, hair falling over his eyes. "What are waiting for?"

_He's…he's mocking me…_

Bea's eyes widen in disbelief as she looks around the bathroom, perhaps trying to spot a hidden camera catching her candid confusion at this boy's actions. "What am I waiting for…?" she breathes out. "I'm waiting for _you_, Mello."

Mello cocks a hidden eyebrow, challenging her.

"You said I could get a shower," Bea states firmly.

"So?"

"And that means that I should be in here alone. To shower. Like you _said_ I could."

At this, Mello takes a step forward, to which Bea reacts to by flattening herself closer to the shower door. "If you think that I trust you enough to leave you in here by yourself," he explains darkly, "you're out of your fucking _mind_." He flings his arm upwards, gesturing to a window that Bea has not noticed until now. "I guess you're going to pretend that you didn't think you could crawl out of that if you were left alone in here, right? Shit, how stupid do you think I am, Beatrice?"

"I didn't even _see_ that-"

"Don't even try," Mello interrupts. "I'm not in here for an opportunity, Beatrice. That's why I'm in here instead of Matt, or instead of one of my other guys that would tear you to _pieces_ at the drop of a hat."

_"He's not a monster. If he was, he would have taken you and-"_

"You can talk about your own friend like that?" Bea whispers, feeling that rushing faintness returning to her. She can feel the contempt radiating from one of them, or both, but at the moment she does not give a damn who is providing it. "Do you think you're that much better than him?"

"It's not a matter of being better than him, Beatrice," Mello snaps. _That _Mello is back with full force (Bea is almost relieved to find; she knows how to counter him now). "He has no priorities. He has no sense of what's important until I lay it out for him. Don't jump to your own little conclusions about what he is."

Bea feels her heart flare at his comment and presses her palms against the glass door until her knuckles go white. "He's kind to me," she says between her teeth. "And I trust him more than-"

"More than you trust me?" Mello says behind a poisonous smirk. Bea is rooted to the spot, biting her tongue and shooting daggers with her gaze. That raw energy spikes when his smirk turns into a full-fledged grin, cracking upon his face in a way that is not beautiful, but _baffling_. "Go ahead, say it. I want to hear you say it. Who do you trust more, Beatrice? Hmm?"

That cold fire is leaping from his eyes and binding her to the door, frozen, her heartbeat thrashing against her ribcage violently. While the scream erupting in her chest bubbles and nearly chokes her, never releasing itself, Mello is leaning in closer to her like a golden demon, washed in a prince's pride and a thief's dangerous smile. "What's the matter?" he croons. "Can't say it, can you?"

_What are trying to get out of me?! And…and why can't I bring myself to say _anything_ back to you?!_

He lifts his arm up and presses his palm against the glass, just two inches away from Bea's head, but his stare is so fixed upon her that she finds it difficult to breathe, to move, to break. When he leans in closer, his face leering before her so close that their lips are nearly brushing, she turns her head, wired eyes never leaving his for a second. "Let me ask you something," he breathes against her cheek, his breath warm and coaxing a trepid shiver from the paralyzed girl. "What if I was one of those other guys out there, Beatrice? What do you think I'd be doing to you right now?"

"S-stop it," Bea forces out raggedly.

"Not before you answer me. I want to know what you think, Beatrice. What do _you_ think I'd be doing right now?"

Bea turns her head a fraction to him, her teeth gritted so hard that her jaw aches. The smile is gone, but the look in his eyes is nothing less than smoking, something scarlet and beating behind the blue. She clenches her fists by her sides and prepares to swing if needed. "Why are you being like this?" she whispers hatefully. "I don't have anything to say to y-"

In a flash, Mello grabs her hands and pins them above her head, lips hovering over the pulse of her neck. When she releases a yelp and tries to flail herself free from his grasp, he squeezes her rebandaged wrists tightly and slams them into the shower door harshly, earning a fresh bout of pain to spring forth from the damaged nerves. "Would it be this, Beatrice?" he coos against her neck. His lips are cold against her heated skin, and the sensation causes her to squirm against him in hopes of pushing him off. The position that his legs are against hers, however, has pinned her roughly to the door, rendering her muscles tense and her jaw clenched as her blood chills and boils over again.

_You're a monster…you're a fucking monster…_

"And you're trembling, too," Mello observes with a mocking interest. "Do you know what they would think of that out there, Beatrice?" He releases one of her hands and clasps it with atop her other, reaching down to turn her face to his. His face is practically flooring, but the added mixture of both fear and adrenaline somehow heightens that fact, and Bea feels something rising in her chest, hot and horrid and preparing to cry out.

"Now, then," he murmurs, voice dropping an octave. "Have you thought of something yet?"

Her chest is heaving so heavily that she has to hold her breath to stall it, but that molten expression on his face forces a breath to expel from her nose as she tries to turn her head away from him again. His hand on her jaw keeps her staring straight at him. "Y-you…you're a coward," she growls. She relishes that dark shift in his eyes; she has pierced his cold, unforgiving exterior with this simple accusation. "To have to…h-have to prove yourself by doing something like this, going against your own word."

The darkness. Such a cold, quaking tide fanning over her entire body, all coming from his ever-deepening glare.

"Y-you said it yourself, Mello," she whispers. "You're not here for an…a-an opportunity, but you're still trying to prove some point you have by pretending you are. You-"

He suddenly clamps down hard on the trembling pair of hands he is gripping and peers closely at her. Whatever is rising in Bea's chest freezes over. Whatever is freezing over in Mello's eyes rises.

_You want your answer that badly? You'd rape me. If you were just like "them" you'd strip me down and rape me. And I sure hope you can read fucking minds, because this is all you're getting out of me. _

Seconds pass, shivering and merciless.

_You can't force me to trust you, because you don't trust me at all, just like you said. You can't make me believe that you're not a monster when you're holding me like this._

And just like that, he releases her. Bea takes in a whooping breath of air, her lungs feeling empty and shrunken, and watches that bitter cloud fall over Mello's face. Somehow, a hateful smirk remains on those perfectly pursed lips. "You're not as much of a dumbass as I thought, Beatrice," he mumbles, a light purr in comparison to his characteristic cursing and booming.

Bea watches him still, expecting another assault to launch out of nowhere. Even so, Mello bids her a final shadowed _(satisfied?)_ glance before turning his back to her and crossing his arms over his chest. "Get your shower already. I'm giving you five minutes. You'd better use them while you have them."

The storm in her blood does not leave her, though. This is all too easy, too submissive for him to just leave her to her business after such a performance.

_Should I even bother questioning him?_

She knows she should do the complete opposite. Like he said, use it while she has it. In her own terms, it is the quiet after the hurricane he had sent flurrying towards her, pinning her hands above her head like a -

_Get that out of your head. Right now._

Use it while she has it. She does exactly that as she scurries into the shower, throwing her discarded clothing over the door before turning on the hot water.

She watches his back the entire time.

* * *

**Don't worry, guys. Mello did all of this for a reason, including his comment about Matt. He's not that much of a dick, not even in this story. ;)**

**Oh, and the hair-dye part...yep, exactly what you're thinking (hopefully, lol). Bea's going to make a little 180 coming up very soon.**

**But expect more heavy-laced angst in the next chapter. Zozozozo.**


	8. Strike

**Hello, all!**

**You know the drift. Lots of angst and borderline insanity. This chapter finally gets into the whole Kira schpeel of things, as well as mentioning of L…which made me sad. He's actually dead in this story, thus marking a piece of my heart to be dead as well. ::sad sigh::**

**Anyway! Enough of my fangirl ramblings. Onto the story.**

**Don't own Death Note, shinigami, or Mello's cool leather gloves.**

* * *

It is almost as though Bea does not exist when her five minutes are up. Mello keeps his back to her, as she was hoping he would, as she towels off quickly and fumbles through her bag for her clothes. She cannot help but watch his stiff shoulders as she dresses; they are so tense that she wonders if he is even human, if there is solid stone beneath his skin instead of muscles and bones.

When she tosses her old clothes back into the bag, she clears her throat and opens her mouth to speak, but Mello picks up quickly and opens the bathroom door, his eyes concealed as he leads her out. She keeps her distance behind him, watching as he clenches his fists by his sides, unclenches a second later.

_Why does he get like this only every now and then? There's no way he feels guilty about what he did back there…I doubt he's ever felt guilty once in his life._

Something in Bea's stomach aches at the thought.

* * *

When Mello catches sight of himself in the mirror before leading the girl out of the bathroom, he still sees himself at twelve years old.

The defined edge of his jaw softens, morphing into its prepubescent smoothness, and his hair is shorter, washed, curling in along his chin. The scowl remains, of course; it is something that he knows has never left him, but he had never really had any reason to scowl at twelve years old, having always been a indication to others saying, _Hey, don't get any closer, seriously._

But what is most disturbing about this brief survey of himself is the memory of what his eyes once lacked. They never used to be so _wild_, yet exhausted all at once. He remembers being at least happy from time to time, when it was just he and Matt climbing trees in the back of Wammy's House throwing acorns at the children that walked by beneath. When visions of Near (_stupid fucking Near) _cracking under the pressure of being number one would be the main source of his peace _(even though stupid fucking Near would be the last one to crack)._ When L -

_L is dead. _

The girl, he is not sure how far behind him she is, but he feels his fists clench, unclench a second later, fingers twitching to latch onto something solid and _break it._

_Dead. And Kira isn't. Kira surpassed L. Near is the new L. And me, I'm just…no! I'm not number two. I'm just not number one _yet.

Matt is standing at the end of the grey corridor, lighting up his seventh cigarette of the morning, and lifts his head when he catches sight of Mello. He is saying something to him, but Mello is lost in his cloud, glaring at the floor and tucking his shaking hands in his pockets.

_I could have surpassed Near. I know I could have done it. We were so close to having our hands on the notebook until Magill fucked the entire plan up…god knows where he's at right now, or how far away we are from the notebook as of now. No, I can't think of it that way…I've got to consider the steps that Near must be taking in order to get ahead in the case…and I know I can get there quicker than he can if I can get this girl's memory to jog even the slightest…_

"So what do you think, man? Think that sounds ok?"

Mello looks up at Matt with a bewilderment that he quickly shakes off for his usual dry irritation. "What?"

Matt gives a jerk of his head in Beatrice's direction, exhaling a mouthful of smoke through a gap in his mouth. "It won't hurt to have our little captive sit in tonight, right?"

When Mello's expression does not change, Matt sighs and elaborates. "On the meeting today. I was thinking it might fill her in a little more on what's going on, maybe ring a few bells or something if we're lucky." He gives a little shrug of his shoulders and places the cigarette back in his mouth. "Eh, shoot me if it's a bad idea, I don't know."

Mello turns to face the girl behind him, who stands a good five feet away from him with her eyes slowly lifting to meet his. When they do (that shade of dark amber has agitated him from day one), they linger for an unnecessary second before drifting off, and Mello must contain his snort of disbelief when the thought of her trying to actually comprehend him amuses itself for a moment.

_The girl just doesn't get it. Oh well, I'm not surprised._

"Yeah," he says suddenly, keeping his eyes on the girl. "You're right, Matt."

He hears Matt nearly choke on his own smoke behind him, but he watches Beatrice's reaction closely with narrowed eyes. "Let her sit in," he continues casually. "It should be funny."

Mello let his burning smirk bloom when Beatrice lifts her head again, not looking at him but her eyes wide on the floor. Meanwhile, Matt mutters something beneath his breath that Mello makes out as, "Jesus, first time you've said that in awhile, Mel."

"Well, Beatrice?" Mello takes a step towards her, wickedly amused by the widening of her eyes. "What do you say?"

_I'm pretty sure I scared you back there, didn't I? Ha…that's all the proof I need to know that you didn't get the point. _

The girl's jaw visibly tightens at his question.

_The point is that you think you have it so bad being around me, Beatrice. How about I give you to one of my other men, let them have a spin, huh? Would you prefer that?_

"Well?"

_Well?_

Beatrice lets her heavy amber eyes flit up to his testing gaze. She is an adolescent with a worn, aged stare.

_You're lucky to have me watch you instead of them. _That's_ the point you're not getting. Although I shouldn't care; you're just some girl with sad eyes who isn't doing shit for helping me._

He watches her take in a breath, weigh her words before uttering them coldly. "I guess I'll have to wait and see when I'm there, right?"

Mello cannot help but twist his smirk tighter, enjoying that dark flush that has come about her eyes as she looks upon him. "Good answer," he says before turning around and heading off for the girl's holding room.

_You'll get it eventually. I'll make you see it if I have to._

_

* * *

_

In the hours that span before the meeting, Bea, sitting in the corner of her holding room, observes Mello quietly.

He has an odd habit of side glances that are neither obtrusive nor comfortable. While they are disconcerting, they are not quite forward enough for Bea to visibly squirm. Even though she takes great notice in them, she cannot say or do anything about it all because they straddle the line of what is normal and what is appropriate.

_But…doesn't he have better things to be doing instead of just sitting there?_

Just to break the silence, Bea clears her throat and clasps her hands in her lap. "Um…so, where's Matt?" she asks conversationally.

Mello's gaze remains unchanging, only a notch heavier, sharper. He takes a bite of his chocolate bar and speaks around it. "Showering," he says, his voice a flatline.

"Oh."

Tense silence. His eyes are still on her, and her instinct tells her to keep talking to break the strain that is mounting in her stomach. "So how are y-"

"You hate me, don't you."

It is not the statement that stuns Bea; no, it is the fact that Mello is smiling when he says it. However minute the smirk is, it is still there, not quite fitting into the equation but still undeniably present, and it will not be solved until it is canceled out. "I…why are you asking me thi-"

"Tell me, Beatrice." There is laughter in his voice, ashes in his eyes. "You fucking _despise_ me. You think I'm waste and want me dead." He is standing up now, approaching her slowly with a leer on his striking face. "And if I gave you the chance, you'd beat me until I couldn't see straight and make a break for it. So go ahead and say it."

Her back is pressed so hard against the wall that her shoulderblades sting, but Bea stays put, eyes darting to find the most useful escape in case he should pounce. "There's nothing to say," she responds, voice low and careful.

"You're lying between your teeth."

Bea bows her head, looks up at Mello through the narrowed slits of her eyes. "What are you trying to get out of me, Mello?" she whispers, growing agitated. "Why do you care what I think anyway?"

He is quiet for a few beats, looking her over with an odd glint to his eyes. Within seconds, Bea has decided that she dislikes it, it makes her squirm. Then, he grabs her wrist and yanks her up, smiling viciously. "Stand up," he instructs.

She twists out of his grasp for a moment, but he catches her quickly again and forces her to look at him, holding her by the jaw. Bea is rooted, her bloodstream both heated and frozen all at once; he is positively flooring up close, as stunning as what can fit the word. His grip is not as sharp as she expects, but it demands her attention, every last fraction of it, onto that face and those eyes.

Something is curling in Bea's stomach, and for a fleeting second she believes that she will be sick. "L-let me go-"

"Hit me."

_Hit me._

_Hit him…?_

The cement beneath her bare feet is cold, as molten as her skin suddenly feels. His touch _(grip) _grows tighter on her jawline; he is entirely serious, frigid, beautiful, horrifying.

"What…?"

"Come on. I'm _letting_ you do it. Hit me."

"W-why would I-"

"_Do it_."

He does not shout. He does not raise his voice even a notch. In fact, it dips, drops a low, smoking octave, swirls around in Bea's ears as she feels them turn a hot, lively red. Her cheeks follow suit soon after as she tries to find something else to look at besides that _face_, but he holds her jaw tighter and urges her to look back at him. Brief shards of blue pierce through his hair, in which almost entirely shields her sight of his eyes, and the blood is rising in her neck now, her lips, heating and exposing and -

Softly. "You're not going to?"

Unsure of what to say, Bea shakes her head slowly and swallows hard, her throat turning sandy and rough.

His eyes darken, and Bea knows that this is not over. Even as he releases her, turns smoothly on his heel and begins stalking off, she knows that this is _not over._

The last thing he says to her on his trudge out the door is, "Stupid. I knew you wouldn't do it."

* * *

It seems that all Bea knows how to do anymore is sleep. It consumes her so much easier than it should, much more effortlessly than it used to back at home, but she submits and lays curled up in the corner of the grey room.

And it is the first time that she dreams of Mello.

In the violent haze of it all, she is writhing, she is warm, and there is are hands all over her, gripping and gliding and pinching and _it hurts_. And yet she leans up into it, digs her flesh deeper into his nails until she bleeds. She can barely breathe, the sight of him is too much to take in all at once. Even as he pulses atop her, holding her in ways that she _should_ be fighting against, he has transformed from aloof to passionate, lips swollen and gaping and red while his eyes are fixed so intensely upon her. She does not know who she is, or what she is doing, or even what he has become as something snaps and boils over between her legs into an eruption of shuddering heat.

It rings within her ears as she bleeds, his nails sinking deeper into her hips. _Hit me._ _Hit me. _Hit _me._

And the last thing she sees, hears, before she is shaken awake is his toxic leer, dark laughter pouring out of his lips as she releases.

* * *

Her instinct tells her to slap away whoever is touching her as she awakes with a jolt, but her eyes open and see Matt.

"Well, well, sleeping gorgeous," he jibes, grinning around his cigarette, "welcome back."

His goggles are on again, she notes, and she can see her frazzled reflection in the foggy orange lenses. Her hair is a sight and her eyes are half-drunken, but she shakes her head and disregards it. "Thanks," she says blearily.

"Man, you sure are violent when you're woken up." Matt lets out a little chuckle and rubs the top of his hand. "Your subconscious must be pretty pissed off."

With his words, her dream hits her _(hit me) _in a cold rush, and she recoils against the wall, staring down at the floor in shock. _My subconscious…? _

"You alright, princess?"

"Do I…do I talk in my sleep at all?" she asks wearily.

Matt's handsome face scrunches up in confusion, lips twisting in thought. After a beat, he shakes his head and exhales smoke. "Nope, I didn't catch anything. Wasn't paying much attention." At this, he grins and tilts his head. "Why, got any guilty confessions you don't want to let out?"

Something drops in Bea's stomach, but Matt nudges her in the side and chuckles again. "Nah, you don't look like the type," he says. "Too cute to be guilty." With a little sigh, he flicks his ashes onto the cement behind him and scratches the back of his head. "Me, on the other hand, well…"

The cryptic statement is followed by Matt standing up with a shrug, Bea watching him as he twists to crack his back and take another drag of his cigarette. "Eh, never mind that. Mel told me to wake you up for the meeting, it's about to start."

What had turned frigid in Bea's body now lights aflame again, the panic seeping thickly from her pores and sending a cold sweat to dot her forehead. She takes a quick series of steps forward to Matt, hands trembling. "H-how did Mello know I was asleep?"

Matt turns around, looking at Bea with that same confused expression. "Well, he came in awhile ago to make sure you weren't doing anything stupid. Said you were asleep and told me to get you up in time for the meeting."

The nausea that comes with his explanation is overpowering, and Bea has to swallow hard in order to not be sick on her own feet.

"I guess he didn't want to do it himself, I don't know," Matt continues idly. "Why?"

Bea clenches, unclenches her fists, feels the clammy and cold skin close in on itself. "N-nothing. I'm fine."

Matt's face remains blank for a moment before he laughs it off and reaches a hand out to her. He gives her hair a little ruffle and shakes his head. "You're a weird one," he says with a grin, turning back around to lead Bea out. "I like that."

* * *

Walking into the meeting room is exactly how Bea expects it. The room is dimly lit, couches with torn upholstery placed along the walls, and all eyes are immediately upon her as Matt gestures for her to take a seat on one. She follows suit in sitting stiffly on the edge of the leather cushion, takes brief relief when Matt sits beside her.

As the eyes continue to bore into her from all angles, Matt leans over and brushes a strand of hair away from her ear, sending a startled jolt up her spine. "Don't worry," he says quietly into her ear, "they all look like oafs but they won't do aything. Mel laid it onto them beforehand."

Bea freezes and refrains from jerking her attention to him too quickly. She swallows quickly and nods. "Really?" she questions hoarsely.

Matt leans back away from her, arms stretched along the back of the couch. "Yeah. I didn't hear much of it, but…nah, they won't do anything. Trust me."

On the verge of responding, Bea is frozen once again when the door swings open and reveals Mello, mouth wrapped indifferently around the corner of a chocolate bar and eyes lit. His gaze flits almost immediately over to where she sits, and the nervous curling in her stomach is suddenly frostbitten and quivering. Before she drops her gaze, he does the job for her when he narrows his eyes and looks away, standing up on the opposite couch and sitting down. His legs are splayed open lewdly, the frontal lacing of his pants loose and lazily tied, and the frostbite in Bea's stomach is washed in scalding acid at the sight.

"Everyone here?" Mello asks, his voice a grunt. It is followed by another groan of approval from the men in the room, and Bea momentarily feels comfort when all the eyes are off of her. She sinks further back into the couch and attempts to relax; Matt's arm has shifted around her shoulders, lightly, not quite touching her. It is…consoling, a soft gesture, and she leans back against his arm, letting her pulse slow down from its rapid thrashing back to an anxious neutral.

"First things first," Mello says sharply, "no one gives me any lip about why the girl is here. You say a word about her, you're done, got it?"

Another muffled groan of understanding. Mello's lips curl into a hint of a smirk that Bea has a feeling only she and Matt pick up on. "We don't have to worry about our little captive leaking anything. She's not going anywhere."

When her shoulders stiffen in bottled rage, Bea feels Matt's fingertips gently tap the nape of her neck, catching her from leaping off the edge of her sanity. Another soft gesture, so minute and yet effective enough for Bea to slowly relax again.

The meeting does not hesitate to shift into business. "We got a note here, boss."

Bea watches through narrowed eyes as one of the larger men on the opposite couch reaches over and hands a small paper to Mello, which he snatches up greedily. His bright eyes flit over the note as the man continues speaking.

"We got word from one of our outside men that Magill was spotted boarding a flight to Atlanta, Georgia just two days ago. When he tried calling from an unidentified number, the call wouldn't go through, which means that-"

"Which means the old man got his number changed," Mello grumbles as he crushes the note in his hand. "Simple as that." He takes another bitter bite of chocolate and narrows his eyes. "Who's tailing him to Atlanta right now?"

The room falls silent. The answer is obvious.

Mello bounds up off the couch, murder in his eyes. "I take it that none of you thought to have someone fucking follow him, right?" he barks.

Used to the sound of his voice exploding in rage, Bea simply sits there with Matt's fingertips tapping her neck rhythmically, watching the boy's tirade through foggy eyes.

"That's not what happened, boss, it's just that we couldn't-"

"Am I the only one who still gives a shit about this?" Mello jerks around, having turned his back to the men momentarily. The flashing in his eyes is so mortal that Bea feels a jolt of dread strike her hard in the center of her stomach as she flutters her fingers up to rest on her navel. "Who else besides me is trying to make this fucking _work_?"

The others begin rambling off words that Bea does not pick up, because Mello's eyes are set to kill and they are now directly on her.

"Stand up."

The order is sudden and callous, but Matt taps her again on the back of her neck and unweaves his arm from around her. "Here we go," he mumbles, turning his head away from her.

Bea stands up on shaky legs, not having time to be confused, because Mello is in front of her in a flash, studying her. Her eyes wander everywhere but his gaze. Whatever she does, she cannot look at him, cannot meet that stare, or else -

"Do you like it here, Beatrice?"

_What…?_

She knows better than to leave empty silence between them. It gives too much to ponder, too much weight to carry. "No," she says, her voice like gravel.

Mello grins. "Do you hate it here? Is that it?"

"Yes." No more hesitation. She answers without skipping a beat; exactly what she knows Mello wants. Their eyes are locked, hot amber stones digging into that cheeky smirk of his. Just for the sake of the argument, she straightens her back and whispers through her teeth, "I _hate_ it."

Oh, and something has shifted in Mello's eyes, and Bea relishes it with an odd sort of acceptance; it is both delight of her boldness and fresh, simmering longing to most likely reach out and strike her on the cheek until she burns.

Still looking at her, Mello speaks to the others, voice sly and liquid. "We wouldn't want to keep our little captive here for no reason, right? It was her old man who put her in this place anyway." He takes a step back now, smirk deepening. "And we all heard her. She _hates_ it here."

From behind, Bea hears Matt mutter almost inaudibly, "Man, cut it out already." Mello does not hear but finally tears his gaze away from Bea, turning on his heel and going back to addressing the group.

And all that she can think about at that moment is how, for once, he had been the first to look away.

* * *

One name lingers with Bea when the meeting is called to a close.

_Kira._

They had spoken of task forces and Japan and shinigami. They had fought about what route to take to get to her father, how they would go about tracking him, and then they had grown rather fussed about a _notebook._

But they had spoken of Kira, the serial killer that Bea has been both horrified and fascinated by for years, the name that she used to hear in hushed odes in the hallways of her high school, the symbol that she herself speaks nothing of. Out of fear? Exactly that. After all, she is a sixteen-year-old girl that has been barred away from the world since childhood, practically her whole life, long before Mello and his band of cronies tucked her away in this dank warehouse. She had never watched the news simply because her mother had been neurotic and her father had never been there to push her in any different direction. Hell, until now, she had grown up believing that the man worked at a fucking loan company, not with the mafia that currently shelters her as they track down notebooks and a serial killer without a face.

Something is churning inside of her. She can feel it, low in her stomach, a thick, curdling panic as she lays on her side, knees curled up against her chest. Because it has all hit her in a big, whooping rush in a matter of a single hour.

She is in the middle of a war. She is under the wing of a dangerous boy that thinks he can fight against Kira, and her family is gone, and her father has lied to her for fucking _years_, and her curves are wasting away, and that smirk Mello had given her had something so much more than hatred laced within it, and, dammit, _she is in the war._

And Beatrice Magill is not stupid enough to not understand that she is going to be here for a very long time.

* * *

**Mmm, little bite of a lemon thrown in there for good fun. :D**

**Do expect the reason for the M rating to occur quite soon. Things pretty much get kind of…scary, from here on. **


	9. Paradox

**Oh, boy, the angst. Seriously, guys. It's through the roof. It's over 9000 and beyond.**

**I also want to thank again the people that have sent me PMs encouraging me to update this. Thank you very much for the support!**

**I don't own Death Note. **

* * *

Matt has always had a very detailed blueprint of who he is laid out in his head.

He is a boy, yes, one with a hell of a skill for breaking shit open and going along with Mello's plans. He is mediocre at a lot of things, but when he is good at something, it consumes him completely, makes up his inner coding, his entire persona. He has a fantasy-complex and prefers pixels to people, and if he had to give up cigarettes for all the money in the world, he would sooner kill himself.

Which is why as he slowly peels his goggles away to look at the girl sitting in the corner of the warehouse room, not quite looking at anything yet everything all at once, he is confused with himself.

He is no Mello. He does not demand the attention of the room and there is nothing dangerous in his eyes. He does not plan cruel games with her mind (he knows the details of each and every one without the blonde ever having told him) and has no intention of scaring her, simply because he just -

_Nah, man. Cut that out. She's a captive, for Christ's sake._

She _is_ a girl.

And, god, how long has it been since Matt has been close to one of those?

_Maria at Wammy's. The pretty black-haired one that Mello couldn't stand. Yeah…when you were fuckin' twelve, man. What a life._

Confusion. The feeling does not sit well with him. Because, above all, Mello may be a prick and Bea may be a cute girl with too much feeling in her eyes, but Matt is a bona fide smartass, always has been, always will be. So when he starts noticing Bea turning to look at him, he simply lights up his smoke and pins his stare on the fly on the wall.

* * *

A door slams open between the hours of seven and eight in the morning. When Bea snaps her eyes up, alarmed more than she probably should be, it is Mello that is standing in the doorway, staring at the floor instead of at her (she hates it when he does this, more than anything else).

"Hey."

She hates that, too. How he can floor her with a single word, a greeting that is far too casual for him. She opts for not responding and simply waits for him to continue.

Mello reaches his hand up to his mouth, seeming to momentarily forget that he is not holding a chocolate bar, before dropping it hastily by his side and leaning against the doorframe. "Come on," he says tonelessly. "We're going for a drive."

"Isn't that a bad idea?" Bea says, not caring whether or not it will anger him. She is beyond the point of caring, so far ahead of minding his patience anymore. _You don't scare me._

Mello merely lifts his eyes a fraction, jaw tightening.

"I mean," Bea goes on quietly, "this can't be a hideout for no reason."

They both fall silent. Bea does not know if this means that she has made a point or Mello is just ignoring her; when she realizes either one would grate at her nerves, she hears his voice again.

"You're not the one who should be worrying about that."

And it is that minute softness in his voice, however shortlived it may be, that gets Bea to stand up.

* * *

Driving with Mello is like what driving had been with Bea's father; tense and silent. Looking out the window had always been the most appropriate thing to do with her father, but Mello…

That is what sets them apart, the two milestones of her life broken down into long drives. Now, as she sits in the passenger's seat with her legs crossed over the other like a preschooler, she stares at Mello out the corner of her eye with an unashamed dullness that has never been hers to claim. No, it belongs to the inner Beatrice Magill that is bearing its teeth, the eyelids peeling back, the heart and brain racing, beginning to show its true face after she had been so blissfully unaware of its very existence.

Still, even with her stormy mood, she cannot help but wonder where he is taking her.

"You act like you'd rather be in the warehouse," he says when she asks him. Eyes on the road, hands gripping the wheel until his knuckles turn white.

"I was just wondering." Bea looks back ahead of her.

The sharpness is back. "Well, stop _wondering_ and just…"

When his voice trails off, Bea is drawn to look at him again. His lips are pursed, eyes narrowing, the angle of his jaw protruding when he grits his teeth. She is growing sick of the effect his profile has on her and turns away abruptly.

"And just let me do this, alright?"

Bea's hands turn cold. That voice.

_Why does he sound…so…?_

He is too much to think about in one sitting. The early morning sun is washing him over in that numbing gold, she can see it through the reflection of the window without even having to look back at him. She takes his advice and stops thinking before she says something she might regret.

* * *

They park behind, of all places she would expect, a church.

It is like a scene out of an old movie that Bea's mother used to watch all the time: the two partners in crime (although Bea is _hardly_ Mello's partner in this charade) complete their final mission before hiding out in a church, dilapidated and on the verge of crashing down into rubble. And what would happen after that was when Mrs. Magill would tell Bea to go to her room and explain when she was older and tainted.

Mello pauses for a moment before he turns to meet her eye. "Don't ask questions about why we're here," he instructs hoarsely. "I don't need it right now."

"I wasn't going to," Bea replies.

Mello opens his door and steps out of the car, the black of his boots crude and heavy against the green of the grass. "Then keep it that way," he says before closing the door.

Bea copies his action and stretches her arms high above her head, the toes of her shoes gleaming with morning dew. "I wasn't planning on doing any different, either," she mumbles.

Thankfully, Mello saves her the time of another rebuttal when he begins walking towards the church. The fallen god complex strikes him for the second time when he turns golden beneath the sunlight, when the tattered black hem of his shirt sways behind him like tiny wings, and when each step he takes with those boots crushes the dew beneath them without mercy. Bea's heavy mood does not even let this go unnoticed; he still remains to be visually stunning, however disheveled, rugged and angry he truly is, and it takes her just a half second longer to look away than she is used to. Which, in reality, is more than enough of a warning for her.

"Follow me," he calls to her without turning around. "I can't leave you out here by yourself. You might do something stupid like think you'll get away."

"Why do you always assume that that's all I'll ever do?" Bea retorts.

Mello glances over his shoulder at her.

_Fallen god._

"That I'll do something stupid," she continues. "That I'll just get myself into a whole mess of trouble if I'm left alone for five seconds. Why?"

"Because most normal girls in your situation would try to do anything they could to get out of it," Mello snaps.

"If I were a normal girl like you said, I would have at least tried to-"

Mello is approaching her, blazing, with long strides that carry him to stand before her within three seconds. _Fallen god, fallen god._ "Tried to what?" he hisses. "If you were a normal girl, what would you have tried to do?"

Bea is too blinded by him to reply; he is golden and glowing, and the blue of his eyes is too bright to even think about forming a proper response.

He takes another step closer to her, the tips of his boots meeting with the toes of her flimsy shoes. "Let me answer that for you. If you were a normal girl, you would have tried to make me go soft, charm me, fool me, mold me with your hands so that I would see that what I'm doing is _so wrong_ and let you run home to your riches. You'd play that cute little game that all girls your age try to pull with guys like me, when they don't know the _half_ of who I am. Of what I've _seen_."

Bea could back up any second now if she wanted to. He is getting far too close, and yet she does not back down. In fact, she cannot even bring herself to look away, cannot even muster up the will to do so. Something crooked within her relishes this moment, where they are simply glaring at each other, fuming but without any real legitimate reason.

"If you have some master plan to make me fall for you and let you go free, you can give up on it now. I'll save you the effort, don't you worry. Because you're just a-"

"I would have run from you by now."

Mello's eyes widen, narrow again and turn cold. "What?"

"When did I ever say anything about making you fall for me, Mello?" Bea whispers, livid. "If you had let me finish, I could have said that I would have run from you by now, not make you _love_-"

Love.

She stops herself there.

_He could never love anyone. _

The glint in Mello's eyes tells her that he knows he has won this time. He has rendered her speechless. She has fallen. _Fallen god. _

And he walks off to the crumbled church as if she had said nothing.

* * *

The second that Bea steps into the church, her mind takes a snapshot of the sight before her, one that she will remember until she is crumbled and crippled. She will drag it out from the corner of her memory for years and years to come against her will, but at this moment when it is only she and Mello inside this church, it is all that there is in the world to think about.

In fact, _Mello _is the only thing to think about right now.

He stands before the stained glass windows, beneath that high, high ceiling, with his profile to her and his head tilted back. Even though she is a good twenty meters away from him, she can see that his eyes are closed, his brow furrowed quietly, and the softest hint of a frown dots the corners of his lips. The stone walls lined with so many windows of varying colours are the cause of the inescapable light that completely drowns him, washes him in gold, green, blue, red, every colour that manages to reach him.

Bea has never seen anything, any human, any building, any _light_ so beautiful, so sudden and weaved together with such a flawless doggedness that both fits and defies the boy that it involves. Like a child, she wants to touch it to ensure that it is really there, that it is not all a hologram crafted from her own delusions.

Her fingers twitch to touch him.

He cannot really be there. Not that breathtaking, not that golden, not what she wants nothing more than to _feel._

Beneath all that flowing light and stained glass and silence, Mello turns his head to look at her.

Eyes connect. Bea opens her mouth to speak. _I want to touch him. _Blue eyes, bright and unreadable, hooking her sad amber gaze; all that light, all that intensity and quiet boundaries lay smoking and festering beneath both ends of the stare. Or perhaps just Bea's. _He could never love anyone._

_And why would I want him to? _her mind bellows. _He's a monster. His gang kidnapped you from your home and have destroyed your family! Why don't you see this? Why are you so stupid? _

_Because he stopped them._

Realization. It hits her, cold and cruel.

_"What if I was one of those other guys out there, Beatrice? What do you think I'd be doing to you right now?"_

Those words spoken in the bathroom days before. _If I was one of those other guys. _It all makes sense; the incident, pinning her hands up above her head and breathing against her neck, trying to coax her into hitting him, asking her if she hated him, it _all makes sense._

"You don't want to hurt me," Bea says weakly from the church entrance. She has not taken another step. She does not think she would be able to if she tried.

Mello lets his gaze drift down to the floor, the shattered stone tiles beneath his boots. Hair falls over his eyes as he clenches his fists. "I want to hurt everyone," he says, quiet and low.

In spite of the chilling bite to his voice, there is a softness that Bea has learned to pick up. It is all the proof she needs. "I'm not everyone, am I?" she asks him.

"It makes no difference."

"Then why haven't you hurt me yet?" No time for hesitation. The question comes right out, liquid and effortless.

Mello is silent for a moment. Light is pouring in so strongly now that he is glowing like coloured glass itself. He looks over at her, his eyes narrowed tightly. "I hate how many fucking questions you ask, you know."

Bea barely winces at the remark. She is so used to this anymore; his biting retorts, his insults, his attempts. But what she is still trying to get used to, however, if that stinging scarlet anger that rips inside her ribs, roused by him and only him. "Well, maybe I would stop asking so many questions if you would actually _answer some of them_!"

She has his attention now. She has never blatantly yelled at him before; in fact, the look on Mello's face at the moment makes her think that he has never been blatantly yelled at by _anyone_ before, with purpose and intent to get their point through his skull.

He takes a slow step forward, still drenched in the stained glass light. "You want to know why I haven't hurt you yet, Beatrice?"

Bea grits her teeth. The look in his eyes is not what she is wary of, but the possible answer and the battle to the death that may be its follow-up. "Yes."

"Because you can't crack something that's already broken."

"Broken…?" Bea whispers. That thick, bubbling anger is settling in her chest, growing cold and filmy and unnerving.

"If I could hurt you," he says slowly, "I would. I would _destroy_ you. I would completely tear you _apart._"

"I'm not broken," Bea denies, quiet, more to herself than to the boy beneath all the light.

Her washed out words go unnoticed by Mello, who takes another step forward. "But I can't," he goes on. "No matter how much I would want to crack you, no matter how much I would love to watch you crash, I _can't_."

Bea feels her palms begin to sweat at the glint in his eyes and she clenches her fists by her sides. "No one's cracked me," she whispers raggedly. "You're just-"

"You've done it to yourself!" Mello suddenly shouts, causing Bea to jump back. "Look at you! You've been spoiled your entire life, living in complete denial about what your father really was, ignoring everything that I've told you, not even _bothering _to try to escape from me even though you've had chance after chance! You make no goddamn _sense_!"

It takes the wracking sob that chokes back in Bea's throat for her to realize that she is crying. She had never felt the tears, she had never noticed the tightening of her throat, but here she is, low and behold, crying like an infant in some run-down church with the boy that she just cannot bring herself to understand. She furiously sweeps away her hot tears with the back of her sleeve, seeing red. "I've done…_n-nothing _to get i-into any of this…and it's not that you…c- can't hurt me, it's…it's because you _won't_."

There is a silence so loud that it rings in Bea's ears as Mello mulls this over with a blank gaze. The fire that has been there night and day on that seraph-like face is now a drought, wiped free of any hint of anger or confusion that she could feed off of. She is hungry for a response in his eyes, and yet he gives her nothing.

Nothing but words.

"You're right."

Bea pauses in the middle of mopping tears from her cheeks. _What?_

"You're right," Mello repeats. "I could hurt you if I really wanted to. But I won't."

After a tense moment of locked eyes and choked gasps from Bea's lips, Mello steps down from the short platform and walks down the crushed-tile aisleway, eyes straight ahead of him instead of on her. "Besides," he says coldly as he passes her, "everyone still has their pieces to break."

* * *

Matt opens the warehouse door before Mello and Bea can walk in, his cigarette clenched tightly between his front teeth. He pulls it out to speak. "Where'd you go, man?" he asks, keeping his voice low. "You just take off for hours without waking me up, god damn..."

Mello simply brushes past him with a bowed head and a scowl, leaving Bea alone with a scoffing Matt. He takes an irritated drag of his cigarette and exhales the smoke sharply. "Hey, thanks," he mutters. "Great answer."

"Thought you said he always gets like this," Bea says quietly. She lacks the energy to bid him her usual smile as she looks up at him briefly before looking down at the floor.

"Well, yeah, course he does, but…" His voice trails off and Bea feels a light fingertip on her chin. Matt tilts her head up to look at her in the eye. "Hey," he addresses, voice gentle and light, "your eyes are bloodshot."

Bea averts her gaze from him. "I'm tired."

"No, you're upset," Matt protests. "And judging by the way that Mel just prissed off…"

"It has nothing to do with him." Bea takes a step away from him but is pulled back when Matt catches her by the hand. The action is soft, but the idea of gentle contact makes something behind Bea's eyelids sting.

"Then what's the harm in telling me, huh?" Matt gives a crooked little smile, ruffling the back of his hair with his free hand. "It's just me, anyway."

_It's just me, anyway._

His face is too kind to be genuine. After so long of watching out for each and every little tick in Mello's face, this boy, Matt, is too simple, too blameless. As he pulls his goggles up to rest atop his head, she sees those honest jade eyes and the question comes barreling out before she can stop it.

"Why are you so nice to me?"

Matt holds his cigarette before his lips, the smoke suspended before his face. He holds her gaze for a moment before shrugging and giving a lazy smile. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"But…" Bea searches for empty words, head reeling. "Why? I mean…Mello's so-"

"Ahhh," Matt cuts in. He takes the awaited drag of his cigarette now, turning his head to expel the smoke. "So this _is_ about Mello."

Bea stares down at the cement floor. "I didn't put myself here."

"Never said you did," Matt says offhandedly.

"And I didn't do this to myself."

Matt chuckles. "You'd be one sadistic little girl if you did that." He reaches out to her forearm and gives her a light pinch, one that jolts her attention back up to him. "Or should I say masochistic."

That smile that he gives her trickles down Bea's chest until it settles in her stomach, cooling all that was aflame from stained glass and beaten-down churches and Mello's eyes. She lets one corner of her mouth lilt up into a smile. "No," she denies softly. "I'm still a wimp over these." At this, she holds out her bandaged wrists.

And instead of simply glancing at them, Matt takes her hand into his and brings it up to his lips. The top of her hand meets that smirk as he lays a warm little peck of a kiss atop it, an act of mindless and confusing chivalry, before letting it go and taking a step back. He brushes a lock of hair out of his line of vision and gives a lift of a grin. "You put yourself down too easily," he says.

Bea opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again slowly. "I…was just saying…"

Matt waves her off with his hand, still smiling at her. "Well, stop doing that, alright?" He scratches the back of his head, tousling his hair about. "You may be a captive here, but you're not a slice of shit or anything like that. You got me?" Drag, hold, exhale, smoke.

Bea swallows hard and begins wondering whether or not Mello is within earshot. How far did he go? Did he hear them talking and is listening at this very moment, shielded behind an open door?

_Why are you getting so…paranoid?_

In the midst of her brief panic, she sees Matt tilt his head to the side a bit, his fringe falling over the bridge of his nose. He studies her for a moment before shrugging and flicking his ashes onto the floor. "Eh, maybe you just need sleep or something," he suggests beneath his breath. "Heh…couldn't blame you." He breathes in nicotine and sanctuary, staring down at the floor and tapping his free hand against his thigh, an improvisational thrumming against denim. Bea regards this sight with a foggy sort of sadness; she is not sure why he seems so out of it, so crooked, but she bites her lip and looks up at him with a knitted brow. He catches onto this and looks down at her, brows raised in surprise. "That's not a familiar face, princess."

"Nothing," Bea says quickly. No need to mess anything up any further; they are both tired, wrung out for different reasons, however unknown Matt's is to her.

Matt hold her gaze as he breathes in nicotine and sanctuary before his eyelids flutter almost-shut, a husky little chuckle drawling out from the corner of his perpetually smirking mouth. He tilts his head back slightly, still looking at her, and plucks the cigarette from his mouth to exhale. Smoke sweeps around his face, which is suddenly washed over in his own private elation. Bea feels her face flush, confused by the heat in his eyes. "Whatever you say, _mon prisonnier jolie_," he says before tipping her chin and turning away. Within the first few steps he takes, he says over his shoulder, "By the way, food's in your holding room. You're dropping pounds like I drop ashes."

"What…?"

"You're welcome."

Bea's eyes follow the smoke as he meanders down the hall.

* * *

Mello watches the girl from a small opening in the doorway. She sits on the floor, cross-legged and hunched over, staring down at the food that Matt has provided for her (without telling him beforehand; this annoys him) without taking a single bite of it.

_You're weak. _

He leans against the wall slightly in order to see her better, eyes narrowing in irritation. This girl irks him more than she probably should, seeing as she is not even aware that he is watching her, seeing as he has no reason in particular to be watching her at all right now. Truth be told, it was a soft, shuddering sigh that had caught his attention when he had been walking by her holding room. The sound had caused him to clench his fists, preparing for a something sharp to leave his lips before he would swing the door open, but for the past three minutes he has simply _watched_ this girl stare at the floor while trying to craft up a reason as to why he cannot look away.

_For Christ's sake, eat already, you stupid-_

Her eyes are downcast and cloudy. That damned, dark amber is grating at his nerves like a dull razor against skin.

_You stupid girl…_

Mello curls his lips into a silent scowl as the girl looks up at the ceiling slowly, as if trying to find something to occupy her mind. _If you're looking for something pretty, you're out of luck_.

His dirtied hands itch for a chocolate bar. His feet twitch to walk away.

_If you're looking for something pretty…_

The girl avoids the food and curls up on the floor, exposing her white neck, her soft jawline. _You're hideous._ Hideously pretty curled up on that floor, so fragile and pliant like pale wire.

It's only then, as Mello makes the realization that he does not _know_ why he is watching her, that he opens the door wider and walks into the room, stopping a foot away from the doorway. The girl looks up, quietly alarmed, and slowly sits up. Mello furrows his blonde brow and formulates a nonsensical argument on the spur of the moment. "Eat," he orders, nodding his head sharply in the direction of the food.

"Why did you take me to that church today?" she asks, her voice a flat, cold line.

Mello scoffs, annoyed by her changing of the subject. "I couldn't leave you here unattended, that's why."

"Matt would have watched me."

"Matt would have humoured you," Mello says sharply. "That's not keeping an eye on you, that's dicking around."

"Why does that make a difference?" Bea asks. "He would still be there to make sure I wouldn't _try to escape_."

The accentuation on those three words causes Mello to take a quick few steps closer to her sitting form, alight at her sarcasm. He shoots her a lethal glare, yet she does not visibly flinch. _You stupid girl. _"It _does _make a difference," he says through gritted teeth.

"And what would that be, Mello?" Her voice is so quiet, her eyes are so clear, her need for repentance is so much less than it should be for someone at her age. Three years ago when Mello found himself at sixteen, he had already committed things that would earn him a rightful chair in the hottest corner of hell, and yet this girl, this _shell_ of a girl, looks up at him with such an untapped purity that Mello's fists are clenching, his jaw is tightening, the need to break this girl in half nearly becomes unbearable.

"I'm the one in charge of things here, in case you've forgotten," he hisses. "It wasn't anyone else's idea to bring you here but mine, so I think I'm entitled to making sure that you don't fuck up this entire operation, you understand?"

"No," Bea says, standing up to look him square in the eye. "No, I don't understand. Because you still aren't answering my question."

"Then ask again." _You stupid, stupid girl._

The heat is rising between them, the frequency buzzing. "Why did you bring me to the church with you today?" Bea repeats, her voice dipping to a quiet murmur.

Mello regards the girl before him for a good, long string of seconds; the pale little oval of her face, the heavy, sorrowful brown eyes, the pursed lips, the sheer untouched air that she gives off that is beginning to dig down deep into Mello's patience. He truly does _loathe_ her at this very moment, and reflects that hatred in the venom in his eyes. "What are you trying to prove?" he whispers.

He can tell that the intimate, hushed tone that his voice has taken on is the cause for the slight flush in her cheeks, or the fact that he has leaned in until she is forced to take a step back, but all in all, he can see that delicious loathing in her eyes for him as well. _So we do share something after all. What better thing for it to be than this._

"That neither of us like answering each other's questions," Bea whispers back.

"And why do you think that is?" Mello asks. _Nothing better to share than hate. Than this bitter, bitter taste in our mouths. _

She lifts her head the most minute inch, but Mello catches on to the defiance in the movement and is, for a mind-wrenching second, floored.

And the next second, he is taking another step forward. Bea stays put. "Oh, that's right," he says quietly. "You don't like answering my questions."

A brief tinge of confusion dots Bea's eyes, but she remains staid.

"But you know what I _do_ like?" Closer, closer to the girl he steps; he can see the ring of dark brown that circles around the outer edge of her irises from where he is. He stops, he lets his blonde fringe flop over his eyes. "I like it when you're angry. I like it when you're _impatient_. When you're an absolute _bitch_."

The muscles of Bea's jaw go tense. Mello drinks in the sight; he is getting to her.

"And since you won't answer me if I ask, I'll just tell you why I like that so much."

He sees her swallow hard, but the girl's posture does not slacken even the slightest. _Good. You're getting better_. Mello stops right before they are able to touch. He is standing so close that he can feel her strained breath on his neck, and lets his eyes drop down to meet hers. "Because that means you have no choice but to trust me, Beatrice."

Bea's eyes go round. "I don't trust y-"

"Then why would you feel safe enough to get angry at me and not hide it?" he presses. "Why would you do that to someone that you wouldn't trust enough not to kill you on the spot?"

Bea is silent for a moment before she turns her head and stares off to the side of Mello's head. "That has nothing to do with anything."

"Because even though you hate me, even though you want me dead in the ground, you trust me. And you won't hit me because you can't touch me." Mello's eyes harden. "Just like I can't touch you. And that's all there is to it." Mello stares at the pale skin of the girl's profile, so close that he can see each individual eyelash that lines those amber eyes. "And if you want to prove me otherwise," he adds quietly, "_hit me._"

"You're sick," she whispers.

"And so are you."

He watches through narrowed eyes as Bea turns her head to look at him. She seems to mull this over before he sees her begin to raise her hand.

_Yes._

Higher, higher, the tiny hand rises, the arm lifts, the shoulder moves back, all so slowly, as if in stop motion. _Do it. Do it. _

And just when the strike should have came crashing to Mello's face, he feels cool fingertips softly meet his cheekbone and drop down to his lips before Bea is darting out the room like a dirtied butterfly.

* * *

…**and on a lighter note! Halloween is almost here, **_**mes amies!**_** I'm cosplaying as L with my semi-epic new wig that is still in the works…I'm expecting at least 25 children scares on my ventures out. :D**

**Reviews are greatly appreciated! The next chapter will be out much sooner than this one. It's all planned out, baby. **


	10. Fallen

…**all I have to say is yyyyyyeah.**

**And that's all the warning I'm giving you guys this fine evening. **

**And I give some credit to my friend for helping me out with the second scene in this. It'll be extended into a oneshot crackfic because we started laughing so damn hard at some of our ideas. **

**By the way, in case you guys are interested, Mello and Bea's theme for this fic is called "Hemorrhage" by Fuel. I always have it on repeat when writing these chapters.**

**I don't own Death Note. But some souls here and there, yeah, I own those.**

* * *

She's done it.

_His skin wasn't supposed to be that soft._

She's done it.

_His eyes weren't supposed to be that soft._

Bea's done it.

_And I can't stop-_

She stares down into the sink, shivering. The vomit has been washed free from the bowl, but she still feels it rising back up in her throat, feels that awful putrid aftertaste, feels his skin beneath her fleeting fingertips.

_-thinking about it._

Rising, rising up her throat. Don't fight it. Let it release itself. Rising, rising-

_But I'm not supposed to-_

Nausea grips Bea. Bea grips porcelain. The memory of his skin grips everything.

_-fall for him._

And here it comes.

* * *

Mello sits with his legs splayed open on the leather couch when Matt comes in, a cardboard box in his arms and the butt of a cigarette in his lips. "You're down to this last box," he says with a grin. He pulls out a chocolate bar from the box and tosses it to Mello, who barely notices it sailing over to him until it lands between his legs. He looks down at it briefly and nods. "Yeah, thanks," he says quietly.

Even in his distraction, Mello catches on to Matt's surprise. His comrade stares at him for a moment before huffing out a laugh. "'Yeah, thanks'? You alright, man?"

Mello begins unwrapping the chocolate bar. "What, did you want me to get on my knees and suck you off or something? I said thanks."

Matt snorts, taking a seat on the armchair opposite of Mello. "Didn't know you swung that way," he quips, crushing his cigarette in the bowl on the coffee table.

"Then don't look confused when I keep my words to a minimum," Mello says airily. He bites into his chocolate bar and rests his head on the back of the couch, closing his eyes. "And you were the one that seemed to want more than a 'thanks'."

"That's not what I was asking about. Jesus."

"Then what was it?"

Matt swings his body around so that he is lying horizontally in the chair, his long legs hanging over the armrest. "I meant that it's not like you to be so hush hush," he explains. "And you look distracted. Kind of antsy. Like you don't know what to do with your eyes or something."

Mello snaps off another corner of the chocolate with his teeth. "Maybe I just wanted a second where I didn't have to worry if that girl was messing something up, alright?"

There is a tense moment where Matt turns his eyes to Mello again, hand frozen in brushing his hair out of his eyes. Mello looks back down at his fingers wrapped around his chocolate, and Matt speaks. "She has a name, you know," he mumbles spitefully.

"Yeah," Mello says, feigning ignorance. "Something with a B…Bridget, maybe. I can't remember. Whatever the hell it is." He waves off the statement with the back of his hand.

_Something with a B. Beatrice. Burning, burning Beatrice._

Matt flicks up his middle finger and sends Mello a glance too hostile to be taken as a joke. Mello furrows his brow, confused by his sudden mood. "What's biting your balls out of nowhere?"

"What's _biting my balls_," Matt says as-a-matter-of-factly, "is you. _You_ are biting my balls, Mel."

Mello stares at Matt for a good, long second before raising his chocolate bar uncertainly. "If by balls, you mean this-" He takes a brutal bite into the bar. "-then yes, I _am_ biting your balls, Matt."

Matt clucks his tongue and rifles through the pocket of his jeans, pulling out a carton of cigarettes. Upon opening it, both he and Mello see that it is completely empty, and Matt flings the carton away from him with a muttered flurry of curses. Mello regards his tantrum with a bow of his head and a smirk, which slowly grows into a dark string of chuckles as Matt continues to mumble furiously to himself, pacing the room in search of another cigarette. Mello's chuckles suddenly mount into such a hard, heaving laughter that he tosses his head back and clutches his stomach, unable to stop himself even as Matt's demands for him to listen to him are drowned out by his own noise.

"Mel!"

Mello pays him no mind as his ribs begin to burn with laughter, his head begins to grow light, and the heat rises to his cheeks, flushing them as red as the girl's eyes had been when she cried in the church-

"It's _not_ that damn funny, Mel!"

God, he can't stop _laughing._The last time he laughed like this, he had been twelve back at Wammy's House instead of nineteen in a mafia warehouse, and that only makes him laugh harder, louder, more desperately. In the midst of doubling over and sucking in mouthfuls of air, Mello's weight gets the best of him and sends him crashing to the floor from the couch. His laughter calms down only for a second for him to mutter "fuck" before he catches sight of Matt smacking his head on the coffee table, having stood up too quickly from his search for a cigarette. The tide of laughter rolls in with such a force that it spreads to Matt, sending them both into a fit of rauceous hilarity on the floor.

_I can't stop._

And while Matt is laughing at the sheer comedy of the moment, Mello is laughing at the sheer comedy of it _all._

* * *

The sound is so striking that Bea feels that nausea return with such a resounding force that she has to lean against the wall before the doorway. Mello laughing. Matt laughing.

But more importantly, _Mello laughing._

It's not that awful, stinging chuckle that comes when he challenges her, or that shadowy snigger when she makes a fool out of herself in front of him. No, this is laughter that is _supposed_ to come from a nineteen-year-old; unrepressed, unchained, free and loud and human.

She is completely thrown at that sound. Her back is pressed to the wall, her eyes are closed, and she is thrown.

* * *

Rod Ross is sitting in the middle of what Mello can only describe as a spur-of-the-moment brothel when he walks into the meeting area. He does not bat a glance at the broads that encircle him, but they bat him glances and then some as Ross acknowledges his arrival with a nod of his head.

"Got any plans, Mello?" the burly man grunts out, all slitted eyes and large, fearsome hands. Fearsome to anyone but Mello, who has grown sickeningly accustomed to the sight of them, and the redhead that is currently placing one of them on her left breast, her eyes pinned on Mello. He ignores her.

"The Japanese taskforce currently have the killer notebook in their possession," Mello says, his eyes straight ahead at Ross.

Ross's hand gropes the woman's breast before he moves on to the other. "So what do you suppose we do from here?"

Mello grits his teeth. "Anything it takes to get Near out of our way." _Anything it takes to get Near out of _my_ way._

"And?" Ross presses.

Mello takes a breath before turning on his heel and heading out of the meeting room. "Kidnap Director Takimura of the Japanese police force," he says brusquely. "And don't mess it up like you did with Magill."

* * *

Hours later, Bea awakens to the sight of Matt sitting crosslegged a couple feet away from her. His eyes are not on the game console in his hands. They are on her.

Normally, Bea would have no qualms in seeing the green-eyed boy looking at her, but today…no, today, his eyes are of a different shade; there is something in his eyes that she can't decipher, can't pick up and find a direction in. She stares back, trying to read him, but Matt breaks the stillness when he gives her a little wave and that familiar lazy lifting of lips. "Déjà vu, huh?"

"Yeah," Bea says, her voice hoarse with sleep. She clears it and swipes at the hair obscuring her eyes. _Nope, that look is still there. _"Are you…?"

"Hmm?" Matt raises his eyebrows. "What?"

Bea sits upright and furrows her brow. _Something's not right._ "You just…you look nervous."

With a little chuckle and a shrug, Matt looks back down at his console. "Yeah, I get twitchy when I don't sleep for awhile. It's alright."

"When was the last time you-"

"Three days ago," Matt says breezily. He lets out another laugh, higher, forced, nothing like the laughter she heard from the other room earlier. _With Mello laughing._

"Three days ago?" Bea repeats in disbelief. She stares at him, slightly dizzy, slightly pitying, before rubbing her temples and sighing. "Well, maybe the twitchiness would go away if you got some rest in today, don't you think?"

Matt's fingers fly along the buttons of his game, blipping and bleeping and barely paying attention to what they are doing. Bea watches them and feels a faint yet horridly distinct nausea beginning to rise back up her throat. _He's killing himself. _"Matt?"

Matt nearly drops his game at the sound of his name. His hands are shaking, his eyes are wide, his face is washed out like corroded paint, and Bea realizes that for perhaps the first time she has seen him, he is not smoking.

_So that's what it is._

"Why don't you just go out and get some more?" she asks, not having the prompt the subject at all, seeing as Matt looks up a little too quickly and nods just the same.

"Yeah, I would do that, but I'm broke as hell and can't leave this place for another three days courtesy of Mello." He begins chewing on his bottom lip roughly, and Bea watches in acute dismay as he sets his game on the cement floor and rests his head back on the wall. His eyes squeeze shut as he clenches his fists atop his knees. "Three _fucking_ days because of this stupid regulation _shit_-"

"Why do you have to stay here for three days?" Bea asks, careful to keep her voice neutral. _I've never seen him like this. _"What kind of regulation is that?"

"Mello doesn't want anyone leaving this place within four days of each outing in case anyone spots us," Matt explains stiffly. "And since he found it his top priority to leave here yesterday without telling anyone, not even _me, _for Christ sake, no one else can leave for another three days. For _anything_."

Bea opens her mouth to speak, but the nausea stops her short. _Matt can't leave because of Mello taking me to the church yesterday. Because of that damn church with that damn stained glass._

"Yet the guy sees no problem with taking his fucking hostage with him out into the city where someone might see you and-"

Matt suddenly freezes and looks straight at her. Bea holds her breath and watches as he looks down at his lap and shakes his head. He weaves his fingers through his messy hair and gives it a faux-casual ruffle. "Nah, don't listen to me, alright, princess?" His voice has dropped to a gentle murmur, but his eyes are still just a notch too wild to suit him properly. Those eyes belong to someone else. Those eyes belong to Mello.

"Matt-"

"Just don't listen to me."

Matt stumbles up to his feet and squeezes out the crack in the door. Bea is still holding her breath.

* * *

Director Takimura arrives without flourish and is tied to his chair within five minutes. Mello watches from the dark stairwell as two of his men sink their questions into his flesh.

"So you didn't know anything about a killer notebook being in the Japanese taskforce's possession?" one asks. "I find that kind of hard to believe."

"Yeah," the other man agrees. "You _are_ the police director, right? So how would you have not known anything about it?"

"I'm sorry," Mello hears Takimura say weakly. His head is bowed and his body is slumped over as much as it can be in his restraints. "All I know about the investigation are the people that are currently working on it."

"What are their names?"

"There is…Soichiro Yagami, Touta Matsuda, and Kanzo Mogi. There had been an officer named Hirokazu Ukita, but he was killed by Kira early in the investigation."

"And that's all you can tell us?"

Takimura gives a sullen nod. "Yes. I…I knew nothing of a notebook until you mentioned one."

Mello steps down from the stairwell into the dim light of the interrogation circle. "Soichiro Yagami," he repeats. "Out of those three men you listed, he's the highest ranked, isn't he, Director Takimura?"

Takimura looks up at Mello and immediately lowers his eyes again. "Yes," he asserts. His voice is so weak that Mello wonders if he has spoken at all, but he takes what he has heard and works with it. For all it is worth, it isinformation. Information that Mello has been itching to hear, crazing over for ages, finally right here before him in the form of a man tied to a chair.

"If I'm right," Mello begins, "there are two Death Notes. One in the hands of the Japanese taskforce, and one in the hands of Kira himself."

All eyes are on him, waiting, buzzing. Mello looks up at the ceiling and feels that delicious curl of a plan begin to make its way onto his lips. "And we're going to take _both._"

_And Near will know what it's like to be number two._

* * *

Bea regards Mello's sudden avoidance of her with more sleep. The fortune teller returns. _It rings of safety. _The heat of Mello's touch returns. That catch and release, that shiver, that palpitation of the heart. _Can you fight, Beatrice?_

When she wakes up in a dizzy, sweaty blur, Matt is asleep in the corner of the room, sprawled out like an abandoned doll. His lips are slightly parted and his brow is furrowed; he is a restless sleeper, which betrays Bea's original assumption that he would be as lazy and careless of a sleeper as he is when he's awake. The rise and fall of his chest is unsteady, and every few seconds Bea catches him shivering, murmuring something beneath his breath, before the rise and fall balances itself out for a fleeting twenty seconds or so.

"Nightmares?" she mumbles to herself. Sighing, she stands up and leaves the room, tense in the presence of a slumbering Matt.

She sees Mello walking down the corridor upon her first step out the door. His hair is wet and loose around his face, hanging over his crushing eyes, and he is dressed alarmingly casual in a black T-shirt and stained black jeans tucked into his boots. The sight of him is a rough slap to the face and another violent lurching of nausea that stems deep within Bea's stomach.

_I touched him._

Mello stops walking and meets her eye from six meters away.

_And he let me._

Bea begins backing into the room again, anxious to extend their avoidance of the other, but Mello's voice cuts in before she can meet the doorway.

"Wait."

And what's so absurd about it all is that she does. With her eyes on her shoes and her fists clenched behind her back, Bea waits for whatever bizarre and potentially self-compromising thing he wants out of her. Does he want to try the whole "hit me" charade again? Because, quite frankly, she is tired and lightheaded and really just wants to get another shower already, not lie to herself and lie to him any more than she has to-

"Come here."

"Why would I do that?" Bea asks, already done with waiting.

There is no explosion from Mello. There is just a soft exhalation of breath and another few steps forward. "Because," he says, "you're thinking the same thing I am."

"Don't tell me what I'm thinking about," Bea snarls. She is angry at record time, and indifferent just the same. "You have no idea."

"Yes, I do," Mello says bluntly.

Bea snaps her head up and says nothing. Mostly because she can't, what with those eyes and the softness that doesn't belong beneath them. _This_ Mello is back, the one with his hushed words and somber sadness and curiosity that does nothing than plant more demons in Bea's head. Demons that leer at her and tell her that Mello is not as much of a monster as she thinks, demons that sing songs of lust and uncertainty that come from that same stare that he gives her now.

She wants nothing more to do with those demons, yet she holds onto those eyes as he makes his way towards her. "You know, it really is a wonder that your _father_, of all people, would know more about the Death Note than the director of the Japanese police force."

_Death Note…?_ "What are you talking about?"

"We have the Japanese director in this building as we speak. He says he knows nothing of the killer notebook _at all_. Didn't even know of its existence."

Bea gapes at Mello with the same bemusement that she has carried with her for ages by now. "Well," she begins slowly, "I guess he and I are in the same boat, because I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking abou-"

"I just found it strange, that's all," Mello says. The tone of his voice gives him away completely. _That's all. _He's lying and Bea knows it. She finds it insulting off the bat the he believes to have brushed his own words off completely, to have fooled her into believing that they were meaningless. His assumptions infuriate her to no end.

He is standing directly before her now, with his wet hair and his cold eyes and his everything that makes Bea look down at his shirt instead of up at his face. _Stop it. Look up at him. Don't let him know anything._

She can't even do that much. That nausea rises higher, demanding her entire attention.

Mello, keeping his eyes steady on her face, leans over and closes the door behind Bea, then inhales sharply through the gap of his lips. "Is there a reason why you can't look at me?" he says in a low, rumbling voice that makes Bea dig her nails into her palms.

"Is there a reason why you care?"

"Yeah, there is, actually," Mello retorts, "because I don't do well with trying to sort out your mood swings, Beatrice."

"_My_ mood swings?" Bea looks up at him now, nearly seeing red but blinded by blue. "Are you kidding me, Mello? I can't even make it through _five minutes_ without you going through every single mood there possibly is."

Mello's eyes don't darken like she expects them to. In fact, all he does is merely stare at her, his lips still barely parted and his hair still golden and dripping onto his shirt. Bea's stomach tightens. He is painfully beautiful, _painfully_, and all the proof she needs is currently clenching in her body and coiling up into itself.

Here come the demons.

"What are you thinking about?" Mello asks.

Bea narrows her eyes. "I thought you already knew."

Mello doesn't copy her action, throwing her off yet again. "But according to you, I have no idea. So tell me."

_Okay, Mello. I'll tell you what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about touching your face, how soft you had been, how you hadn't stepped away, how you had fucking asked for it. And how you're asking for it now without having to say anything. Oh, and I'm also thinking about having to get a shower and have you stay in the bathroom with me. There. That's what I'm thinking about. Now back away and leave me alone._

"I'm thinking," Bea manages, "about getting a shower."

"Alright, then." He turns away from her abruptly to lead her to the bathroom, and Bea finally breathes.

* * *

It isn't until after Bea has wrapped the towel around herself that Mello speaks.

"What were you thinking?"

Bea freezes in the midst of reaching for her clothes that lay folded in the sink. Much to her embarrassment, Mello is looking at her over his shoulder, and she holds her towel tighter around herself. "Could you turn around?"

"Answer me first."

"What do you _want_ me to answer, Mello?" she asks, irritated.

"When you…" Mello stops himself, and Bea quickly catches on to why. His voice is too soft. He hardens his eyes upon her and goes on with, "When you tried to hit me. All you did was…"

_Touch you. With the very tips of my fingers._

Bea fights off both a blush and a furious glaze to her eyes by turning away from him, showing him only her profile. Her knuckles have gone white from her fierce grip of the towel. "Well, I'm sorry that I didn't punch you in the face like you wanted me to. I don't have anything else to say but that."

"But what made you change your mind?" Mello urges. "When a guy tells a girl to hit him, she doesn't start to do it and then decide to just barely touch him. That makes no sense." Mello grits his teeth. "_You_ make no sense."

"I wouldn't want to make sense to you," Bea mutters.

Mello pauses for a moment before Bea feels him take a step forward. She closes her eyes and stifles another wave of nausea. "You're right," he says, "because then you wouldn't be able to hide anything from me."

Bea whips around to face him, a stinging rejoinder already smoldering on her tongue that is suddenly frosted over at being face-to-face with him, covered only by a towel and whatever resilience she still has remaining in her eyes.

There are demons in his gaze, in the way he has gravitated to be standing in front of her. Demons she wants to reach out and touch-

-_with the very tips of my fingers. _

He does the job for her and raises his hand in the same fashion that she had, appearing to be on the verge of striking her, and just as Bea begins to dodge, his fingertips graze her cheekbone and rest on her jaw. There is something wild in his eyes now, brought to violent life at his touch, and Bea feels a pang of both exhileration and fear spring up in her chest.

His fingertips are warm and rough, warm and _oh god he's touching me no no no yes._

"It's frustrating, isn't it?" he says through his teeth. He breathes in slowly, shakily, his fingertips roaming up to her lips. Bea trembles, stricken in her towel and in his touch, and she tightens her jaw when he tries to open her mouth. Her lips part just barely from the tip of his pointer finger. "You thought I would hit you. You thought I'd beat you to the ground, but then I do _this_-" He runs the pad of his finger over her lips, dragging out a shiver from Bea's shoulders. "-and suddenly you just don't _get it_."

Something is pulsing, warm and demanding, between her legs. She wants, she needs, she hates. _Mello._

He is leaning into her face, peering at her with narrow, icy eyes, when something turns inexplicably molten beneath the ice, melting it down and surmounting both his gaze and the pounding between Bea's legs. She can't help herself from the soft groan that squeezes through her gritted teeth because she wasn't expecting it to grip her so quickly, to completely override the need to keep her indifference in its place, the need to appear as though she just doesn't _care_.

His eyes are burning into her lips. It is becoming harder and harder to keep a firm grip on her towel as his fingertips drift down to her neck, his eyes fixated on her mouth, and _god I just want to let go go go and-_

Mello pushes her away with such ferocity that Bea's back flattens against the shower stall and she nearly loses grip of the towel completely before she scrambles together and glares down at her feet. _Let go? Let go? What the _fuck_ is wrong with you? You _hate him!

It seems that they had been thinking of the same thing after all, because Mello is backing away from her with such loathing clear on his face, either for her or for himself, that Bea nearly loses it all together, nearly has to run to the sink and retch up these desires, this heat, this thought that _I could actually let go for him. I hate him. I HATE HIM!_

Mello swings the bathroom door open and barrels out, slamming it shut behind him.

And Bea retches up demons into the sink at the sound of him cursing down the hallway.

* * *

The first thing that Mello bellows upon entering Takimura's holding room is, "Make him talk."

The two men in charge of interrogating the director squabble for excuses as to why their methods aren't working on the guy, why he doesn't have a clue about anything they need to know, and Mello listens to about three seconds of it before promptly sending his fist crashing into the first man's jaw. The other interrogator seems to be conflicting between backing away and hitting Mello to floor him, but Mello kicks his heavy boot back against the man's knee and hears the gratifying crash that he makes upon collapsing to the floor.

He is the only one standing in the room now, and yet no surge of power comes out of it. Only an intense, grating rage that he cannot recall having once experienced so blindingly before in his life. He glances frantically at Takimura, who stares up at him with a tired shock, who has nothing to give him, then back down at the two interrogators making their way to their feet with murder in their eyes. They freeze upon hearing Mello's rasping breath and seeing that he is trembling from his head to his toes in raw, tamperedrage.

"I don't care what it takes to do it, just fucking _do it_!" he roars, throwing his hand in Takimura's direction. "_Make him talk_!"

He pounds back up the stairwell two steps at a time, knowing that it will be the exact same thing when he comes back.

* * *

Matt is still passed out on the floor when Bea returns to her holding room. She takes one look at that sleeping body and immediately turns around in search of an empty room. She walks unevenly down the corridors of the building, her bare feet turning cold above the hard concrete floor, and ultimately comes across a tiny room containing nothing but walls and a floor and a half-opened door that she immediately closes upon walking in.

For a moment, she simply paces back and forth with her eyes closed and her breath out of order (_inhale, exhale, exhale again, inhale three times, exhale). _Then she opts for kicking the floor with the balls of her feet, muttering to herself, breath still out of order.

Then she just stands for awhile in the center of the room, staring up at the grey ceiling and biting her bottom lip.

Twenty quiet minutes pass. Her breath is still a clumsy inhale exhale inhale inhale exhale.

And _then_, defying everything she originally thought, Mello opens the door and the awkward rhythm of her breath stops entirely.

His hair is still wet. His hands are shaking.

_Fallen, fallen god._

Neither speak. Both stare. His breath seems out of order, too; this whole ordeal seems out of order. Her standing in the middle of some empty, cold room, Mello standing in the doorway, Mello reaching back to close the door, Mello walking towards her with something frantic in his eyes. Something that Bea steps away from, not out of fear, but of understanding.

_Hit me. _

Oh, it replays over and over in her head as he approaches her, as he holds her gaze just because he _can_, as he stops right in front of her and tilts his head up with a dull defiance in his eyes, exposing that pretty jaw, exposing everything in one single lift.

With a hoarse cry and a swing of her hand, Bea slaps Mello so hard in the face that it stings and screams on her palm. The sound not only echoes in the empty acoustics of the room, but it echoes in Bea's own heart, in her hand, and most of all, in Mello's eyes as he slowly turns his head to look at her. His mouth is open, his eyes are bright, and he says, "Again."

And she does. Again. And again. Again again again, striking him harder each time across that beautiful god face, catching sight of his flushed red face and hearing his shuddering breath, only to slap him again, more hateful than the time before, and the time before that, and the time before that. The adrenaline is a hot rush that rips the words out of her chest, in perfect tempo with each strike.

"I _hate you_! I _hate you_! I _hate you_!"

Again, again, and again, until Bea crumples down before Mello's feet, pounding her fists against his hard, unyielding body, screaming out mottled words that have no beginning or end, screams that tear out of her throat, sobs that wrack every muscle that has weakened and strengthened and weakened before him. She tears at his clothing, beats against his legs, his chest, his boots, anything that her frenzied fists can touch.

And then Mello yanks her up by the shoulders and crushes his lips against hers.

She is not even standing on her own feet, but instead held up by him, held against him, her body weak and tense all at once, sobs still escaping her lips, muttering her hatred and her need against his hot, forceful mouth. There are hands in her hair, hands that go from her scalp to her neck to her shoulders and all the way back up, and there are _lips_ that drive hers open, _lips_ that she has waited for for how long now? How long has she needed this? How long has this been the root of her anguish towards him, this raw, untapped need that is now being drained and refilled all over again?

_How long?_

She does not know how to do this, but she keeps her mouth open for him, gripping hard at his shirt and twisting the material in her fists, trembling so violently that Mello has to push her against the wall to keep her standing. He is bruising her lips, biting her, digging his nails into her shoulders and breathing heavily in between each painful kiss, and Bea lets him because she wants it, she wants _this_ and she wants _him_, just like this. The way that she had imagined it; rough and tumbled and desperate, exactly everything that they are.

Mello pulls away from her tear-streaked face only to grip her by the sides of her head, his forehead pressed up against hers, golden hair and chestnut hair intermingling, but Bea is unable to open her eyes and look at him. She is so heavy and drunk off of him, off of this kiss, that she can only slump against him and wait for the next with an impatience that is nearly killing her.

"Do you understand?" he says weakly _(weakly)_ against her lips.

Bea begins to break down again, shivering and crying and moaning and trying to calm her inflamed nerves only to inwardly beg for another bruising kiss to do it for her. "Y-yes…y-_yes_-"

She hears him suck in shallow air before - _yes_, there it is again - he cracks her down the heart with lips of fire and hands of a _fallen god._

* * *

**God, I remember passing this idea for the kiss scene by with my friends, and it had been months ago. I really, really hope the wait was worth it for you lovelies. **

**And, um…it pretty much goes downhill from here. But all for the better. -snicker-**


	11. Disconnect

**Hey, all! First off, thanks muchly for all the reviews and faves for the last chapter! It's great to know that you guys are keeping up with this. :D**

**That being said, this chapter takes off right where the last one left off, ya perverts. -smirk- **

**On a not-too-unrelated note, **_**everyone should look up Slipknot's "Snuff". **_**Right now. Seriously. First time I heard it, I sat there with my jaw gaping at how much it fits Mello and Bea. Just do it. Deeewit.**

**Alrighty, guys, I don't own Death Note.**

* * *

_God, it's so much._

Bea doesn't know what to do with herself when Mello lets go of her. By letting go, he is merely giving her time to breathe, still crushing her to his chest and pressed to her forehead. They are sweating and spinning and everything has jumped up to an unbearable heat, and something between Bea's legs is crying out to be released; accordingly, Mello shares the same conflict, for he takes her stinging palm and presses it to the untouchable, concealed haven between his hips. "Feel," he breathes out into her neck. "God, Bea, just feel it…"

She rubs up against something hard straining within his jeans, straining within Mello, and retracts her hand, stunned and thriving off of this far too much. She tries to take a deep breath, but there is nothing to breathe in; there is only Mello. Where is her breath? Where is her dignity?

Oh, that's right. How silly of her. It's in the palm of her hand, which is being guided back to press into Mello's jeans in the shared heat of this empty room. Mello guides her face back up to his and, gripping her jaw, crushes another bruising kiss onto her trembling lips, all the while holding Bea flush against the wall and his body all at once. His hands, feverish, possessive, drop to her hips, her stomach, her breasts - _he'stouchingmenoyesgod_ - until he is cupping her, molding her in his hands and Bea is squirming against him. She is agonized, on fire, unable to breathe against this forceful tempest, but, god, he just feels so _good_…

Mello yanks his entire self away from her so quickly, so suddenly, that Bea wonders if he had been there at all. Her stinging, swollen lips and stinging, swollen heart are her reminders, and she watches through glassy eyes as Mello stares at her, open-mouthed and red-faced. He takes a few shuddering breathes, exhaling sharply, only to stagger forward and stop just inches short of touching her again.

Bea leans wearily against the wall, standing on air. God, where is her breath…? Surely he hasn't stolen it, seeing as he can't even seem to find his own as he eyes her fiercely. Bea finds the wall with her palms and closes her eyes, the sight of his debauched face too much to take on unsteady feet. _Go away. Touch me again. God, leave me alone. Press me to the wall. _

_But whatever you do, don't look at me._

"Someone's at the door," Mello whispers raggedly.

In her daze, Bea can only give a slow nod. _Keep your eyes closed. Don't look at that face. That face…_

"Stay in here, alright?" he says. "It won't look good if we're seen leaving this room together. I'll go out and…" His voice trails off. Bea opens her eyes a sliver and sees that he is clenching his jaw and turning away from her. "_God, _Bea."

Hearing him call her by "Bea" is enough to force her to snap her eyes open completely, a brick dropping into her stomach. He's still hard; she can see it with a brief glance down to his jeans, and she feels her face redden at the idea that _it's because of me…?_

Mello runs his fingers through his hair and gives it a little clutch before letting go, hissing through his teeth. "Just…_no one_ can know about this. Don't even hint anything to Matt, he…he has his ways of…"

Bea scans his face, catching every shift in expression, every twitch of emotion that shouldn't be there in the first place. Mello catches her lingering eyes and sucks in a breath to speak again in a low, urgent voice. "He's a smart guy, you understand?" Mello takes a step forward. "He only needs one word to figure everything out. _Everything_."

Bea gives another nod. Why would she tell anyone anyway? Especially Matt, with his lazy smiles and his cigarettes and his contradicting kindness. She takes a shuddering breath and fights for another when Mello takes a sudden quick series of steps towards her until he is within inches of her face again. Something that isn't quite anger but still burns through Bea's bones is in his eyes as he narrows them and feverishly observes her face. Bea holds her breath, wanting to feel the weight of his body against hers, its heat, so much that it's making her dizzy. "E-everything," she mutters for no reason at all.

There is a tense, aching silence. Their eyes are locked with opposite expressions; Bea, bewildered and delirious, and Mello, intense and scarlet. The boy suddenly turns away, sucking in breath and clenching that pretty jaw again. "Just remember that," he says before leaving.

* * *

It's no one else but Matt outside the door. His eyes are disconnected and somewhere far away, somewhere dark, and Mello furrows his brow at the sight of him, thrown off. "Hey," he says, "what's-"

"You know," Matt cuts in, his voice shaky, "normally, I understand your rules and shit, the regulations you set up for this place, but…" At this, Matt turns his head and exhales slowly through a small gap in his lips. He pulls down his goggles that sit atop his head so that they shield his eyes, a rough movement that tousles his hair and pushes it up at awkward angles. "But here's _my_ rule, man," he continues. "When I run out of cigarettes, I go out and fucking buy some more, because I'm losing my _fucking_ mind just sitting around trying to find something to smoke, alright?"

Mello keeps his eyes neutral as he stares at Matt. Just beyond the door that stands behind his back, there is a disheveled and flushed Beatrice Magill leaning against the wall, her eyes glassy and so easy to read to anyone who would walk in. The thought alone makes Mello step back closer to the door, ready to ward off any chance of Matt opening it.

Before he can respond, Matt continues in that tense, nearly hysterical voice.

"I'll pick up whatever else we need, but quite frankly, I don't give a shit if you say I can't leave, because, god dammit, Mel, I can't _take_ this anymore. I fucking _need_ my smokes, man, just like you need your chocolate, which is shit loads easier to quit than what I need, ok?"

"Fine," Mello breathes out a beat too quickly. "I'm not stopping you."

Matt seems both surprised and satisfied with this answer. While he still nods, he takes a step back and double-takes briefly. "That's…that's it? Fine?"

Bea is just behind this door. Mello is growing nervous, his fists curling. "You go get what you need, throw off whoever might be following you, and get back here when it's clear." He flicks a stray hair out of his line of vision and grits his teeth. _God, Bea. _

Matt stares at Mello, his lips pursed, before he suddenly says, "I thought we didn't use that room for anything."

There's something in his voice that makes Mello's stomach turn over. Before he can hesitate for too long, he says, "It was empty. Needed a moment."

Matt says nothing. He says nothing for too long.

"Why do you care?" Mello asks breezily. "I thought you had to go out and get what you _need_."

Matt lowers his head for a moment before taking in a humming breath. "Nothing, man," he says loftily, "I just thought it was, you know, kind of weird that I couldn't find you _or_ Bea at the same time."

A second passes. Mello's stomach clenches and his jaw follows.

"You have any idea where she is?" Matt asks quietly. "Seeing as _you're_ the one who thought of kidnapping her and all."

"What the fuck are you talking about, Matt?" Mello snaps, suddenly enraged. "What does the girl have to do with you needing to buy cigarettes?"

"Did I say she had anything to do with it?" Matt has grown angry quicker than Mello can ever remember him getting. In fact, his anger rivals Mello's, seeing as his voice towers over his without even seeming to try to. This fact alone only manages to mount Mello's rage to an almost numbing level, yet he remains leaning against the door when the thought of Bea's swollen lips and lidded eyes sinks its talons into his mind again.

"And even if she does have anything to do with it, why should you give a shit?" Matt demands, that perilous edge that had always belonged to Mello returning to his voice. "You can't even remember her goddamn name!"

"When the hell did I-"

_Oh, shit._

He _had_ said that. A blind attempt in appearing careless. _Something with a B._

"Just leave," Mello spits out. "Jesus Christ…wasting your own fucking time-"

Matt whips around and stalks off before Mello can continue, muttering beneath his breath and jamming his fists into his back pockets. It's only when Matt turns the corner in the hall that Mello turns around to open the door.

And there she is, just as he thought she would be: pressed against the far wall and furiously, maddeningly, hatefully readable.

* * *

Matt doesn't return for three hours. He bides his time in the parking lot of the convenience store, smoking five consecutive cigarettes in the driver's seat. He opens the door and swings his legs around so that they flop out of the car, heavy and tired. Then, with a soft grimace and smoke in his lungs, he stares at the glowing mouth of the sun and wonders what it is about Beatrice Magill that's got him so damn _hooked_.

* * *

Night arrives swiftly. Bea hasn't moved from her corner in her holding room in over an hour; in fact, she can't even remember leaving the other empty room at all. She doesn't recall walking back down the cement corridor. She can't trace back to sitting down, curling her knees into her chest and staring straight ahead of her at the wall.

All that's there is Mello.

Her lips are burning. Her heart, burning. Her bloodstream, her tongue, her fingertips and stomach and soul, they grovel in the fire and all she can do is watch them smolder.

One of the heavy double doors opens, and Bea shoots her gaze up so quickly that she knocks the back of her head on the wall behind her. Hissing at the dull pain, she waits for Mello and, for the first time, feels sour disappointment when it's Matt that enters.

He seems to be surprised that she's here. His eyebrows disappear into his mop of auburn hair and he stands still in the doorway for a moment before clearing his throat and closing the door behind him. Bea watches, curious, as he leans against the wall opposite Bea and stares at the ground. When neither speak for an uncomfortable stretch of seconds, Bea wonders if perhaps he's ignoring her, forgot she was there, but then he speaks in a low, hollow voice that cancels out the thought immediately.

"So, uh…Mel and I got into a little skiff."

_I know, I heard, _she almost says, but amends it when she remembers that she was not supposed to know or hear it. "Really?" she asks, voice neutral.

Matt gives a slow nod. "Yeah. Earlier today."

"Why?" _Because you wanted to leave the warehouse to go buy cigarettes. Mello and his regulations. _

Matt opens his mouth to speak, but opts for shrugging and scuffing the toe of his worn out boot on the cement. "Eh, it's always something," he murmurs. "Always been like this. Guess I should be used to it by now, huh?"

Bea stays quiet at that. There's something in his voice that isn't quite on key, and it's making her increasingly nervous. She decides to stare at her socks and simply listens, face remaining as neutral as she can manage.

"You know," Matt says softly, "this is probably the last thing you want to hear right now, but…"

Bea bites her tongue. Matt goes on without prompting. "Mel, you know, kind of has a point."

A bitter chill flips over in Bea's stomach. She looks up and sees that Matt is staring at her.

"It's been kind of bothering me lately." Matt pulls at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. "Why didn't you try to run that day we took you to your house?"

His tone is more serious than Bea has ever heard it. The lazy, noncommittal lilt to his voice has been wiped nonexistant so quickly that the impact gives Bea a jolt in her stomach, like a punch to the gut. She nearly doubles over, suddenly nauseous again. "What?" she asks.

Matt's green eyes narrow, an ugly twist to his otherwise appealing face. "I mean, yeah, we would have found you again and brought you back, but you wouldn't have known that, right?"

Bea doesn't like where this is going. In fact, she doesn't like the fact that she's even sitting down anymore and quickly stands up, facing him. Same level now, but four inches below him. It's as close as she can get. "What makes you think that-"

"Bea," Matt says in a hard, unyielding voice, "it would have been so _easy_, practically _effortless_ for you to have gotten away from us. You wouldn't have even thought twice about it if you had been anyone else-"

There it is: anyone else. Bea shoots her gaze back up to Matt's with a rapidness that makes her brain knock against the back of her skull. "Anyone else?" she shouts. "That's exactly what I'm supposed to be, right, anyone _else_? Because then you wouldn't have to think so much to figure out why I'm not anyone else and why I'm Beatrice Magill, is that it?"

Something blank passes over Matt's eyes and he pauses in the middle of retrieving his lighter from his pocket.

"Oh, and I guess things would have made more sense if I'd just run off to the police and told them everything, huh?" Bea hisses, seeing red. "I'd tell them about how I'd been kidnapped and beat shitless and nearly raped by forty-something-year-old men, and I'd let them know exactly where this place is, and they'd come bursting through this door within the _hour_-"

"And would you tell them about your father, Bea?" Matt asks softly.

Bea's heart goes numb.

_Don't._

"Would you tell them," Matt continues, "that Daddy worked for this place and left you drugged and forgotten in your room while he hitched his ass out of the country?"

_Stop it._

"Or would you leave that little detail out?" Matt drawls. He fishes out his lighter and flicks it open, a flame cracking out. "And in your cute little crime report…you would leave out that detail of _Mello_."

Bea doesn't think she's ever felt so sick in her life. The mentioning of Mello's name mixed with its context forces her to swallow back a wave of nausea and lean against the wall behind her, glowering at the passive face of Matt.

"Face it, Bea," Matt says casually, "it's not this place that's changed you. It's not me. It's not yourself, or the war you've been thrown into, or the sign of the times or even your dear old daddy. It's Mello."

Blood settles like iron in Bea's veins. For the first time in many days, the wounds on her wrists begin to sting again, and images of Matt bandaging their sad states melt into memory. But then images of Mello, fire-eyed and catching his breath and clenching his pretty jaw override it, bringing back a sickness of a very different name. She feels herself go dizzy before she sucks in a breath and turns away from Matt's jade eyes.

There are footsteps outside the door, many of them, and Bea hears Mello's voice passing by until it fades out down the hall. She closes her eyes at the falling sensation deep in her stomach, but hears Matt suddenly exhale sharply and speak.

"Jesus," he mutters, just within earshot. His footsteps are thundering and angry as he makes his way to the door. "It's _always_ Mello."

_

* * *

_

_"Get up."_

_Nine o'clock in the morning, cold, angry. Mello's bottom lip curls in upon hearing the cold, foreign voice so early on a Sunday, but nevertheless, he rolls over in his bed and looks up at whoever has roused him._

_It's that stranger again. Mello has only ever seen the man roaming aimlessly through the bright halls of the orphanage every now and then, always weaving in and out of the light without having to speak to anyone. He's the polar opposite of light; dark, unbrushed hair hangs crudely over his eyes, which are about as bright and cheery as lumps of coal, and a face so washed out and pale that Mello wonders if it's the light of morning that's to blame. _

_"Who are y-"_

_"Get up."_

_Again with that monotonous demand. Mello already loathes him. "Fine, fine," he snaps sleepily, "just back off a little, god…"_

_The man stays where he is, slouched over and looking at Mello with a faint look of lethargy mingling with diluted interest, but for the most part, his gaze is unreadable and detached. Mello gets out of bed and faces him with a defiant smirk. The man simply stares at him for a tense moment before muttering thoughtfully, "They were very correct about you, weren't they."_

_Mello, however uncertain as to what he means by this, is offended. "What's that supposed to mean?" _

_The young man seems to come out of a daze and sharpens his gaze. "You're angry without even knowing why I'm here," he says quietly. "Is there a reason for that?"_

_Mello puffs himself up to rival the man's slumped height, but falls about four inches short and makes up for it with a hard grimace. "You try being woken up by someone you don't even know!" he accuses. _

_"Which is why I avoid that risk and simply stay awake."_

_Mello glares up at the stranger before huffing out a breath and muttering, "Well, what are you here for then?" _

_The man tilts his head to the side for a moment, staring round-eyed up at the ceiling, before looking back down at Mello. "To put this as briefly as possible, Mello-"_

_"Wait, how do you know my-"_

_"- I must ask that you refrain from, as I have been informed-" He takes out a small piece of paper from his jeans' pocket and reads it aloud in a bored, droning voice. "- 'attempting to stuff Near, six years old, into one of the playroom toyboxes on November the fourth, five o'clock in the afternoon.'" _

_Mello watches in incredulity as the man unceremoniously crumples up the paper and replaces it in his pocket without so much as another glance at it. His tired, disconnected gaze lands back on Mello, who stares up at him with such enraged embarrassment that he can scarcely see straight. The man fails to notice and goes on with, "While I'm well aware of your dislike towards Near, Watari is not allowing me to simply shrug this occasion off and blame it on competitive tension." At this, he gives a small sigh, still staring tiredly at Mello. "I would appreciate it if you make this simple and nod your head or what have you so that we can both go back to what we were doing, if that's not too much of a problem."_

_And for reasons completely lost to Mello, he does just that; he nods, stunned out of his breath, and watches the man turn quietly on his heel and slink out of his room, closing the door with a soft click behind him. All without ever having raised his voice. Unbelievable. _

_He listens to the stranger's padding footsteps until they die out before flinging himself back into bed and glaring at the wall until lunchtime._

* * *

Once the memory is dusted off and polished, it doesn't leave him. Mello sits in the empty room where he had pressed Bea to the wall and nearly, _nearly_ given in to something ugly, nauseous and spinning.

He has every reason to believe, even nearly ten years later, that the young man with the dead eyes and bored, detached words had been someone he had been fighting to be. It had been a most rare occasion of speaking to the cryptic stranger face to face, but Mello has wracked his brain for a reason besides the one that has been staring him down in his mind, in his thoughts, in the mirror.

He has every reason to believe that that man had been the L he had been fighting to be.

The L he had lost to Near, who Mello had attempted at hiding away in a toybox for the rest of his bigheaded, arrogant life so that he could someday have those same dead eyes and bored, detached words as well. But in order to become L -

_"I'm afraid L is dead."_

_"D-dead…? But…but how?" _

- he had to be number one.

He had looked that dark-haired, slouched man in the eye and puffed himself up to look like someone big and unbeatable, while the man had known all along that Mello was second in line, the bastard child to a stringy harlot of a mother, the enemy of Near and the enemy of the world. L had known long before his death that Mello had never been good enough. He had known with a single glance at the ghost of a child at the top of the top that Mello wasn't going to cut it.

_"Which one of us did L pick, me or Near?"_

_"He…he hadn't chosen yet. And now that he's gone, I'm afraid he won't be able to."_

"Yes, he had," Mello hisses against his fist. "He always fucking knew it…"

It's taken Mello nearly ten years to figure out who that tired-eyed man had been, and he's never been more disgusted with himself in his life.

* * *

The sight of Matt or Mello eludes Bea the rest of the night. Upon sitting in her holding room for hours on end and chewing at her nails down to the quick, she realizes that not only has the icy burning in her heart intensified, but a new emotion has gripped her hard around the neck.

Desperation.

Its sticky embrace is inches away from suffocation. Bea claws at her neck with gnarled nails, squeezing her eyes shut until kaleidoscopes detonate behind her eyelids, trying with everything she has to rid herself of the deathly hold the feeling has over her, only to end up fruitless and squirming on the cement floor like a worm.

_I need him._

She needs his hands and lips and eyes and his fucking entirety, all hot and alive and breathing down her neck. God, she needs him in this hard, grey room so that she can try to hate him, turn cold, and then let him burn her pretty.

She can feel herself freezing over.

_Where's the fire at, Mello? Why'd you take the fire with you…?_

Footsteps. Outside the door.

_Why won't you come and burn me pretty?_

* * *

He comes to her in the night, after Mello is sure she's drifted off to a sleep deep enough to stay in the unaware. He can't have her knowing he's here any more than he can have himself here at all, but the dark can erase everything if he wants it to.

The girl is crumpled up like a forgotten paper doll in the corner of the room; it's freezing in here, absurdly so, chilling the corners of Mello's tight grimace. The bright stab of light from the hall tilts across Bea's face when Mello pushes the door another inch, leaving it open just enough to see her.

He takes a step forward, but the crude clack of his boot sends a bolt of panic through his stomach at the thought of Bea waking up. _You can't see me. I don't want you to see me._ Cursing inwardly, he bends down, unlaces both boots, and sets them quietly on the floor before approaching her on bare feet. The cement, Christ, it's practically ice, but Mello opts for gritting his teeth and ignoring it as he softly walks on.

He's walking into his own destruction, and the girl on the floor is oblivious.

When Mello's toes are within four inches of Bea's upturned palm, he stops. Something's not right. Something's not as it seems. Years and years of distrusting everything moving and everything immobile, Mello knows that nothing is ever as it looks on the outside. Perhaps she's feigning sleep. Perhaps she's playing dead. Perhaps this is all one finely tweaked ruse to land him on his ass and send Bea flying out the door into the freedom that waits within the indigo midnight.

Then, he almost laughs. _She can't hurt me._

And then, in the same cold second, he almost frowns. _And I can't hurt her. _

As Mello stares at that slant of light arching along Bea's jaw, another thought: _Looks like we're even. _

This thought alone, shivering and solid as it is, jars Mello to an extent to that causes him to stumble a half-step backwards, lips agape and blood racing. _Looks like we're even. _The girl's got him. In ways more than one. The girl's got him even. And she doesn't even fucking _know it._ In fact, she's sleeping on it, here, in an overwhelmingly cold warehouse in the middle of a war, a war that she's unknowingly crashed into, that Mello has _sent_ her crashing into, and he wants to tear her to pieces and kiss her hard on the mouth and shake her up, up, up, for the sheer and unescapable fact that she's got him _good._

After a few seconds, calm returns. It steps back in with uncertain feet and eventually plants itself in Mello's brain. _No, _he thinks, shaking his head in the dark, _she's done nothing. It's not like she's planned this. She doesn't have the mentality for it. She couldn't do anything to me if she tried._

But there's that hesitation as he tries to take another step forward.

_Then why am I -_

Mello grits his teeth and stops the thought short. Can't be having thoughts like that. Not here. Not in the dark, barefoot and spying on the girl's dreams, flushed in that single shard of light. He can see the soft white of her palm, strands of burnt honey hair fanning over her neck and face, covering her eyelids but leaving her lips exposed; a mockery of the both of them, Mello's sure. Leave the lips bare. Remind him of what he's done and what she let him do.

With a stifled groan, Mello kneels down before Bea and listens to her breath. It's quiet and too rhythmic for Mello to feel entirely at ease, but she's completely still on the hard floor and Mello can't help but furrow his brow in unexplained exasperation.

_You don't have the mind for it, Bea. The mind to sabotage me._

And yet he wants to believe it fully. He wants that second of hesitation, that single glitch in time, to be clean sweeped from his mental list of things about this girl that he doesn't understand.

_It's just not there. You're too clean, too spiteless. _

Mello leans in, his hair falling over his eyes, and feels her breath on his face. His stomach tightens.

_You don't hate me enough, Bea. Enough to make this alright._

He reaches out, keen to touch that simplicity that's curled up on the floor before him. His hand ghosts over the curve of her jaw, fingers tense and still, floating just above her skin. He could break this girl right now if he wanted to. He could tear those invisible butterfly wings from the middle of her back and leave her flightless forever. If he wanted to.

He really could.

Just…curl himself around her spine and watch her lose her wings. Maybe tack them on to his own back, see what it's like to soar instead of fall flat at every attempt. It would be so easy. It would be so effortlessly available, what with the butterfly sprawled out tragically on the cement floor, completely unaware and completely, _completely_ helpless within these walls.

If he wanted to.

_If I wanted to._

His fingertips graze her lips in a moment of weakness. _You're too much. _They linger, they touch, they burn. _Shit_. Mello jerks his arm back as if burned by the pink of her mouth and glares down at Bea, marking the exact moment that she opens her eyes.

Any other time, she would have slept through it. But Mello knows that nothing is _ever_ as it appears, and that the girl had been awake the whole time. From the second he walked through the gap in the door, she was awake, waiting for him, setting up her trap, caging him within his own distortions and demons all finely tuned and crafted just for _her. _

Yet he says nothing. Even as she stares up at him with blank doe-like eyes, her face a solemn portrait in that singular stab of light, he says nothing. Just stares, and just waits.

"Where were you?" Bea whispers after a long silence.

Mello turns his eyes away from hers, choosing instead to glare at her pale collarbone. "Does it matter?"

"Does it?"

A pause. Mello sighs out through gritted teeth. "Look, I'm really not in the mood for your reverse psychology, alright?" he warns.

Bea sits up and rests her back against the wall. She still somehow manages to remain in the light, Mello in the vacant dark. "Thought you knew me inside-out, Mello," she says simply.

Mello snaps his attention back to her face. Completely unphased, unafraid; how does she do it? "What?"

"You say you're not in the mood for my 'reverse psychology', yet you open yourself up to it completely by asking me questions I can't answer."

Bea's bottom lip is tucked beneath her teeth. When she releases it, it will be a tempting shade of red, slightly swollen from the marks of her teeth. A memory stirs. Mello pretends not to notice nor care. "I think," he says noncommitally, "that's your own problem."

"Problems," Bea repeats. She lets out a little laugh, a high, unsteady sound cutting through the air. "Yeah, I seem to have a lot of those anymore."

"What are you-"

"Especially when you're around," Bea continues, severing Mello's words and mindset. She stares at him curiously as his jaw tightens, his lips press tightly together. "You seem to bring out of the worst of them. The scariest ones. The ones that keep me from sleeping, like right now."

"Stop it."

Bea tilts her head, all soft eyes and hard words. "Why did you come here? In the dark, not even turning on the light-"

"I didn't want to wake you up," Mello growls, going back to glaring at her collarbone. He's lying and they both know it, but he'll be damned if he gives her any other reasons besides the basics.

"You knew I was awake."

"And how are you so sure of that?"

Bea's lips gape open for a suspended blink of time, and Mello just wants to grab her by the hair and ball her up and throw her against the wall, bounce her around the ceiling like a spring, then uncoil her and make her see how much of a distraction she's becoming. All the while, wearing her wings as a sign that they're even, but not by much.

"Because this isn't you, Mello," Bea finally whispers. "You wouldn't come in here late at night just to watch some girl in the dark when you could be out doing something more important." She takes a moment to inhale, exhale softly through the gap in her lips. Mello watches it the whole time. "Something that could bring you closer to…to _whatever_ you're trying to get. Whatever my-"

Bea stops short, breathes in, then goes on. "Whatever my father seems to know so much about."

Mello's eyes narrow minutely, just enough to bring her face into focus. And, for more reasons bleak and unknown, he lets her go on.

"No," Bea whispers, "that's not Mello, right? Mello doesn't watch girls in their sleep because…"

Mello waits. He waits with mock patience on his knees and palms. What doesn't Mello do? Why doesn't he do it? Tell him, Bea. He dares you.

Bea's eyes freeze over, and she does just that.

"Because I would think that Mello would prefer his girls awake."

The scale is tipped. Bea, ahead by one. Mello, dragging behind.

God, he's so sick of this.

In the space of a single breath, Mello grabs her by the shoulders and pushes her down onto her back, flattened out beneath him like a bookmark between dirty pages. In the bitter shadows, his lips find hers, which are open and moist and _god_, he might just snap from them. He might finally split open, right down the middle, bleed out onto the cement not like a martyr, but like a fool dressed in a killer's clothing that had given in to temptation and crumbled for it. He's marking the numbers on his grave as he grips Bea's hair, kissing away her breath, stealing her life force from an all too willing mouth. He's imagining the narrow black coffin and the cross in the ground when he yanks her head to the side and lays hot, greedy lips on her cold neck, bruising and sucking; he feels the vibrations beneath the skin firsthand when Bea mewls and gasps below.

Before either know it, their hips are grinding and rolling like experts, like they know what they're doing, like one isn't a shut-in captive with sad eyes and the other isn't an orphaned conspirator that's been denied victory since his birth. Bea is lithe and tiny and breakable beneath him; her lips are trembling and warm and bruisable when he claims them again, paying too much attention to the thrashing of his heart and the pressure of Bea's breasts pressed against his chest than what could possibly be going down the hall, what Takimura might be hiding, how much Matt knows-

And then Bea touches his cheek, and Mello freezes completely.

It's a light grazing of her fingertips spanning from his cheekbone down to his jaw, her lips parted hungrily for him, and for a moment she not only stops kissing him, but stops breathing, stops showing any other sign of life besides her inescapable heat. Mello holds himself up with trembling arms, eyes squeezed shut, mouth gaping and frozen atop hers, and for a split second, he thinks that _this is it._ This is what death truly feels like; not fire or agony or pleadings or ice, but the cool lips of this girl and the searching silk of her touch.

And something about that makes it all the more deadly. The sheer depravity of what they're doing appeals to the side of Mello that demands attention, every single web of it, from the girl that's currently draining him of all restraint, order, and common sense. He could pull away from her right now, cut out that white shiver of light bleeding through the door and walk out completely, let his men do what they want with her and focus on why he's here and what he's trying to do. He could get back to his roots of hatred for Near, hatred for Kira, desperation for L, desperation for _himself_, and Beatrice Magill would be nothing more than a tremor in the wind.

But part of Mello is leaning towards neglect, and Bea's lips are a little too virginal to last.

* * *

**Do forgive Matt, guys. I love him. I wouldn't make him an asshole for too long. **

**I love throwing in some L in there. Do expect some more of him throughout this fic, if you guys don't mind. -blush-**

**And for those that are following Through Glass, do not fear! The next chapter **_**will**_** be out soon, I promise you. **

**Remember, "Snuff" by Slipknot! Do it do it do it! **


	12. Product

_-group hugs-_

_Hello, all! After perhaps the ugliest stretch of writer's block ever, I present you chapter twelve, which ironically enough has turned into my favourite chapter to write thus far._

_And, uh…oh noooo. It seems as though I've created a fandom all in its own. And that fandom is MattxBea, and what's even worse is that…I kind of love it. Well, to be correct, I love MelloxBeaxMatt, because writing twisted love triangles are so fun, but my god…this chapter is for those currently swooning over Matt, because it's pretty much all about him._

_Don't get me wrong, though. MelloxBea IS the pairing of this particular fic. I know, I know. Some might say it's toxic and wrong and that she should obviously love Matt more because he's the nicer guy, and I actually agree wholeheartedly, but…here's the thing. Bea's character _depends_ on her being with Mello in this fic. To be quite honest, Bea is a stupid girl. A stupid, naïve girl that's been caged her entire life and wants to do something that she knows is toxic and wrong; aka, Mello. Yes, they have a love-hate relationship, sometimes leaning more towards hate, but…really, that's what the whole idea is about. Bea being blind, Mello being Mello, and Matt being smitten. And there we are._

_That being said, an announcement to completely counter everything I just said. There's going to be an alternate-ending sequel to Trails of Fire involving Matt and Bea. It's going to be awhile down the road, of course, but I figured that I should get that out there seeing as I've inadvertently caused an army of MattxBea fans. Oops. _

_OH GOD ANYWAY. Here's the chapter. Lime content ahead, as well as the Sayu arc (if you can even call it that…). Beware. -vanishes in puff of smoke-_

**

* * *

**

Mello leaves Bea relatively unscathed. Her lips are sore and her hair is in knots, but she's still in one piece (_relatively)_ when Mello breaks away from her with an agonized groan, shaking his head at nothing and everything, angry and golden and beautiful. He mutters something resembling a prayer beneath his choked breath before the door shuts behind him. The shard of light is severed and darkness hangs high, like dark rain, like something suspended above the ground by a necktie, swinging with dwindling momentum.

Much like Takimura.

* * *

The director hangs dead for five hours before word reaches Mello. All is chaotic and fast-paced and squabbling around him, but from his seat on the couch, all is still. There are excuses and pleas fired off at the gargantuan man to Mello's right and to Mello himself, useless things that do not change the fact that Takimura is cold and swinging below, but Mello's not phased.

He's got a plan. Mello's _always_ got a plan, and this one's ugly.

"Wait," he says, his eyes fixed straight ahead of him, "this is good. This is what we _want_."

"What we want?" one of the men asks from the couch. "What's he mean by that?"

Mello, however, barely hears him. His head is a spinning carousel of dizzy, dark sound and that scalding, bright reminder that _Soichiro Yagami is the head of the Japanese taskforce Soichiro Yagami has the notebook Soichiro Yagami -_

- has a daughter.

And as he lays out the next plan of action, Mello can't help but think, _Oh, you're gonna hate me for this one, aren't you, Beatrice. _

* * *

Matt's walking. He doesn't know how long he's been walking, but he reckons it's been a good half hour since he started and he really doesn't feel like stopping now. His legs are twitchy and restless, and Bea's too much of a distant thing to be close to right now, and Mello's off doing his usual bad-guy shit in a cold room with leather couches and the rancid smell of foreign substances and dirty women.

Thing is, Mello's not _really_ a bad guy, and Bea's not a dirty woman, and this is the fuel to fire as Matt walks, and walks, and walks.

He doesn't like this hallway. Hell, he doesn't like this entire place, let alone a single smoky corridor lined with cement-asylum walls, but he's been playing make-believe that he gives a shit about Mello's rules on leaving too often for far too long to put forth the effort for another argument. He's mentally exhausted and his feet are sore from the hard soles of his boots, but he'll be damned if he stops walking for even a second longer than it takes for a flame to erupt on the end of a cigarette.

But when Matt turns right and sees a wired-eyed Bea wandering down the tributary of cold floors and grey walls, he does just that.

The first thing he notices, besides the soft dip of her waist and the slender bulb of her shoulder, is that she doesn't look…_here_. She's losing too much weight, he thinks, and there are bags under her eyes that shouldn't, _shouldn't_ be there. Her hands are clasped together behind her back, a childlike gesture that appeals to her childlike, pointless meandering in a place that she doesn't belong in. The waistband of her sweatpants hangs loosely around hips that once gently bloomed and pressed against the silk of a skirt (he always pictures her in a skirt whenever he gets bored, namely one of white silk; pretty fucked up of him, but whatever), and when she turns to look at him, he sees that the dark amber of her eyes is a shade more dull and blunt than it's supposed to be.

And he doesn't like that. Shit, he doesn't like that one little bit.

There's a moment's pause between them before Bea speaks, her voice quiet and ethereal. "I'm tired."

Matt feels something deep in his stomach flip over and fizzle at the eerie air her voice has taken on. Shit. "Then go to sleep," he says, and then, just for the hell of it, he adds, "princess."

A phantom of a smile breathes over the corner of Bea's mouth. _Shit_. "I could do that," she murmurs, "but I don't think it would be a good idea."

Matt swallows, blinks, tries to breathe normally. He's _really _not liking her voice right about now. It's sounding like some sort of broken music box, a mewling lullaby from out-of-order lips. "What, you scared or something? Scared of the dark?"

Bea's eyes stay rooted to his face for a second before she looks down at her bare feet, and Matt's gaze fixes itself on the top of her head. _Look up, Bea. Look up at me, princess. _

Bea inhales deeply, her chest rattling as she does so. Clearing her throat, she gives a lost little chuckle and says, "I'm not scared. Just sick."

"Sick?" Matt repeats, leaning down to her face. He taps her lightly on the chin, a once-endearing signal that's now something slightly panicked as Bea sways on her feet before him. "Hey, come on, look at me. What's wrong?"

Bea seems to only half-listen to him, because when she looks up at him, her eyes are blank and glassy like some sort of fucked up mirror. Shit shit _shit_. "I don't know," she says softly. "I really don't know."

Matt doesn't know either, but that doesn't stop him from smiling weakly and tousling his hair with his hand; _quick, do something casual, Matt_, his instinct tells him. And since he trusts his instinct more than he trusts the fog in Bea's eyes, he lets out a little breath of a laugh and nods. It's something painfully casual, so outwardly effortless that he could shit. "Well, uh, not sure how I could help you out there, miss," he says. "Ha, I sleep whenever I want, tired or not. It's good for the soul." He pats his chest once for added effect.

Bea, however, doesn't smile as Matt expects her to. Instead, she stares at him with those mirror eyes and says, "Do you think you could help me?"

_Oh, hell. Any way you want. Any way you can possibly dream of. _Matt squirms and glances down at her lips for a second before asking, "I'm good at helping, I guess."

Bea takes a step back, tilting her head so that she looks like a little chestnut-haired bird with lost eyes. Matt quails inside and thinks of white silk skirts billowing over white hips, of white legs and white thighs opening for him, for _him_ -

And then, she speaks. "Could you teach me French? Until I fall asleep?"

Through the heavy weight of half-formed arousal and twisted judgment and the sight of this girl swaying unsteadily before him, Matt somehow manages a nod and a smile. "Yeah, if you want," he says, all casual things and effortless bullshit that does its best at overriding the thought, _Oh, god, Bea, I could teach you everything you'd ever want to know before you fall asleep. _

_

* * *

_

So they return to the corner of Bea's dim room with a goal and a vision that's both unimaginable and silly: to get a delirious Bea to learn French from a feverish Matt.

She's not very good at the language. Her tongue can't curl around the syllables the way that Matt's can, but she's also not very lucid, so it's understandable that she would struggle and sigh. Her memory is also on a short leash; it seems like the second Matt feeds her the translation for a certain phrase, it gets tossed to the wayside to be forgotten. _Comment ca va? _turns into _How old are you?_ so shamelessly that when Matt goes to correct her for the third time, he decides that translations are to be discarded in that exact fashion. She's scarcely paying attention anyway.

Besides, as he sits against the cool stone wall, he can make out the soft moon of her face, and he knows he's paying enough attention for the both of them. He slowly exhales through the slit of his mouth and tilts his head to the side. "Alright, what about this," he says, his voice flighty with thought. He goes out on a limb and breathes out, "_Beatrice est tres jolie."_

Bea makes a sleepy little sound in the back of her throat and rolls her head. The delicate bones of her neck crack and readjust. "Well," she mumbles, "I heard my name in it."

Matt nods. "It was about you."

"Was it something good?" Bea says through a tired breath of a laugh.

Matt mulls that comment over for a moment before clearing his throat and replying with, "_Oui._"

"Oh, I know that one," Bea says, sounding as if she's onto something grand and wonderful. Her excitement with something so small settles heavily in Matt's stomach, and he squirms. "That means 'yes'."

"_Oui, bon. Merveilleux._"

She tries that phrase out through her own lips, and the clumsy sounds that form are both embarrassing and endearing. She's shit at French, and he's shit at breathing anymore. He sees a flash of a smile, her sad, careful smile, and something begins falling from somewhere high and dangerous. He looks away and centers his fixation on the rubber toes of his boots. "Uh, anything in particular you want me to teach you?" He scratches the back of his head and longs for the orange shields of his goggles over his eyes, but then he'd be seeing her through hazy plastic, and that just won't do like it used to. He wants to see her in her own colours, not in his, and her colours are all amber and pastels and, god, _white…_

Bea gives a light shrug. The thin material of her long-sleeved shirt is beginning to fall down one shoulder, and he can see her collarbone bidding him a shy hello. "Anything you want, really," she says.

It's with this phrase that pushes Matt to nearly leaving the room, because there's something hot and sharp rising in his own depravity and it's starting to make him dizzy. He busies himself with his fringe instead of with thoughts of her all spread out and mewling. _Shit_. A laugh forces itself out from his chest. "Uh, let's see…"

As he pretends to think about French, Bea hugs her knees and rests her chin atop them. Looks at him. _Beatrice est tres jolie. _"Just, I don't know, say whatever comes to your head. In French. I just want to listen to it."

Such a weird girl. He's feeding on it. Freezing in tousling his fringe, he looks back at her with wide eyes and repeats, "Whatever comes to my head?"

"Yeah. You don't even have to translate it." Bea's lips curl upwards for a heated second before they die down again. (Later, this will disturb Matt, because he's seen that curl on another pair of lips, and they belong to someone made entirely of black and gold and blue, not amber and pastels and white.) "That'll take the fun out of it," she says.

And, being Matt, he abides. His eyes lock onto her face, his head starts spinning, and his lips start sinning with just as much dizzying vigor.

"_Bea est dans une jupe blanche. Elle…elle rougit. Elle rougit et…elle se touche."_

Oh, man. He's spinning, and Bea's watching cluelessly, and this is all royally fucked up, but he keeps going.

"_'Matt,' elle dit, 'je veux votre aide. Touchez-moi. Touchez-moi, Matt.'" _His voice cracks. His hands start to shake. But he keeps going, because the story's screaming in his head and it needs _out_. "_Et…et il ecoute. Il embrasse Bea. Sur les levres, sur le cou, chaud et ouvert et…_"

Matt's voice tapers off, hoarse and weak, and he raises his fist to his mouth in an effort to try and control something primal bubbling in his chest. Bea doesn't appear the slightest bit phased by his sudden shift in behaviour; she wouldn't, he would hope, seeing as she can't speak a scrap of French, let alone the deprived phrases he's spewing out heatedly at her now. He needs air. He needs the girl. He needs a breath of air and he needs to press against the girl and feel her in every language known to fucking _man_-

"Hey," he says tightly, "I'll be right back."

Bea furrows her brow, tilts her head. "You alright?"

He waves her off and stands up, shuffling quickly to the door. His basic logic switches on, a morbid lantern. Keep your hips away from that girl, Matt. You've gone to bad places and now you're paying for it. That's how it works. That's how _you_ work, Matt, you big dumbass. "I'm fine, yeah, fine, fine. Be back in a minute. You won't even have to blink and I'll be back."

* * *

Mello's walking. He knows exactly where he's going and what he'll find when he gets there, but he's tired and just faintly burning off of a warm glow of complacency. He's saved this operation's ass and he knows it. He's saved this entire process with a flick of his wrist and he _caters _to it, but in spite of that, his legs are weary and the smug lift of his lips is growing heavy and bored as he walks, and walks, and walks.

He stops for a moment to reflect on nothing. His bright, leonine eyes attach themselves to a grey point in space. His breath hangs and his head lowers. Something doesn't feel right. Something's missing, or maybe out of place, or not set down correctly in the framework of a giant puzzle. An infuriating image of Near is conjured at the thought and Mello clenches his fists until his knuckles sting.

And then, as if coming out of a trance, he resumes down the corridor. This news can't wait. His conscience can.

* * *

It's never that big of a deal when Matt comes. He doesn't fight for it, but he doesn't cling onto it too much when it gets there either, so times like these normally aren't anything special. A shiver, a groan, a jerk, and then a brief blink of recollection before it's back to the dull roar of boredom again; that's how the circuit runs for a guy that smokes away these basic longings on the off chance they do pop up.

But this time, it's different. Hunched up and trembling against the shower wall, he's losing it, man, _losing it_. Soft eyes and white skirts overrule horrifying images of a childhood veiled in drugged-up mothers and revved-up fathers, an adolescence revolving around death and a single aspiring letter. The only sounds to be heard are the faucet running and his own gasping breaths as he manipulates himself into a bucking, trembling tantrum.

_Bea est dans une jupe blanche._

His jaw drops open, his eyelids flutter shut.

_Je veux votre aide._

Oh, no. The walls are caving in. Harder, harder. Shudder, shudder.

_Touchez-moi. Touchez-moi, Matt._

And things have their ways of turning to white so, so nicely.

* * *

"Are you asleep?"

It's less of an accusation that Bea expects. Mello's voice is absent of the usual all-business edge that can both slice and scald, and has been replaced with a dull drone that tells her the _other_ Mello is back. She lets her head loll to the side to catch sight of him in the doorway, and she's right.

He looks tired, that's one thing for sure. His eyes are flat, his jaw is slack, and the rough tension always bottled up in his shoulders and chest has been drained out through an invisible spout, causing his body to slouch slightly and curl into itself. One shoulder of his vest is on the precipice of sliding off, and she can see the pale skin of his chest and sharp collarbone. After taking in this vaguely disturbing sight, she gives him a small shake of her head and begins to stand up, only to be stopped with, "Don't."

Bea stares at him, confused. "What?"

An odd look passes over Mello's face, one without a proper name, and Bea doesn't like it. "Don't stand up," he says quietly. "Just keep sitting."

"Do you think I'm going to attack you or something?" Bea asks incredulously. "I'm going to jump up and claw your eyes out?"

To her surprise, Mello huffs out a low, chilling laugh and turns away for a moment. Looking off somewhere dark, he says, "You just might, actually."

Bea immediately goes cold at that. Any remark from Mello involving something she just _might _do is never a good thing. She ignores his warning and stands up. "Then what's the difference?" she asks. "I'll just get a head start."

Mello eyes her up and gives a heavy sigh. "Whatever," he mutters. "Do what you want. Either way, I need to let you know something."

Both are silent for a second before Mello looks her over again, that odd expression still in his eyes. Bea feels her face grow warm and leans against the wall for support. She feels one notch above feverish, not because of Mello's gaze, but because of something else brewing inside of her, something that's making her vision cloudy and her head ache. "Then say it," she mumbles.

"Stop looking like you're on the verge of passing out, and I will."

Bea closes her eyes. "I'm _fine_."

"You look like the walking dead," Mello says. "You're not eating again, are you."

A shot of fire bursts through Bea's chest (_so angry again, so fast_) and she opens her eyes to glare at Mello head on. The filter of her brain works just quick enough to keep her from spitting out, _Well, Mello, it's kind of hard to get around to eating when you're the only thing I can taste in my mouth._

"Anyway," Mello sighs out, "I figured I should let you know that someone's gonna be arriving here soon. Someone new."

Bea gives him a wary glance. "From where?"

"Japan."

"Who is it?"

Mello pauses, and Bea watches nauseously as his eyes drift down to the floor. She half expects them to burn two little blue holes into the cement. "It's a girl," he says. "A girl that might make this entire thing work out in my favour."

For a good long stretch of time, Bea waits for something to say to make its debut in her brain. She leans against the cool wall, her palms flat behind her, and counts down the seconds until something will surely arrive, but when nothing does, she eventually settles for a small, high-pitched laugh. "A girl," she repeats. "That'll make this…_thing _work out for you."

Mello's eyes lift. They're on her now, and they're dangerously bright, but Bea truly, honestly, _deeply_ has never felt less threatened by shades of blue in her life. In a fierce motion, she flings her arms out, questioning air and time and space and Mello's stupid, empty words. "What _thing_?" she screams. "What fucking _thing_ are you trying to win over, Mello? Because whatever it is, it's the reason I'm here, and it's the reason some other girl is going to be here, right?" She kicks the wall behind her and is standing before Mello in four steps. He doesn't move. "So, what's her story?" she asks, her voice unhinged and hysterical. "Does she come from a nice family? Does she do well in school? Does she have a bunch of friends?"

Mello's lips crease into a hard line, a pale tightrope, but he seems to be more occupied with studying Bea's face than wasting time with a response. Bea leans closer to his face, shivering with hot rage. "What's her name, Mello? Does she have one of those stupid things?" She takes a step forward, their lips almost touching, and whispers, "One of those things I used to have?"

She watches, breathing heavily, as Mello lifts his face defiantly and narrows his eyes. Even with Bea puffing herself up to be something tall and potential, his cold eyes tower over her. "Sayu," he says softly. "Sayu Yagami. The director of the Japanese task force's daughter."

Neither speak. Neither breathe. Neither shift their eyes. Had this been just weeks ago, back when she was pretty and soft and wore skirts and didn't know _shit_, Bea would have been cowering, crying, her resolve crushing like rock candy beneath a shoe.

But now, things are different.

She's not afraid.

And this time on her own volition, she raises her fist and punches Mello in the mouth.

* * *

Mello's starting to think this girl is a saint, some sort of fucked up angel, because the way Bea's fist connects with his face is so perfect, so divine, that from the gruff recesses of his throat, a heated groan escapes that's mingled with both pain and a most monstrous ecstasy. His head whips to the side, a fresh gash from Bea's knuckles already dripping red onto the floor, and through a curtain of hair, Mello just stares at her.

Bea, breathing heavily the way she is, looks nothing short of an animal. "You're unbelievable," she breathes out. "You're disgusting and soulless and fucking _unbelievable._"

Mello wipes his bleeding mouth with the back of his hand, still gazing fixedly at her. A dizzy, breathless smile plays about the corner of his mouth. "You're holding back, Beatrice."

"Stop calling me that!" Bea screeches.

"Oh?" Mello spits out copper, feels the pain start to rush in. Beautiful. "Then what the fuck should I call you, hmm?"

"Don't call me _anything_." Bea's face crumples up in revulsion and she throws her hands out, as if trying to shake off something sticky and overwhelming. "God, Mello, just don't call me _anything_…"

Mello laughs, the sound loud and booming in the dense acoustics of the room. "Fine. I can do that. I can treat you like just another product of a girl thrown in here by an assembly line, if that's what you want." Mello takes four long strides that carry him directly in front of Bea, her sinking face mere centimeters away from his. His mouth, still oozing, brushes against her ear, staining her crimson. He murmurs, "Go ahead. Tell me what you want."

When he steps back, he's met with a glare so hateful, so _alive_, that he has to bite back the urge to take her wrists, pin them to the wall, and make her his own, right here in her musky holding room, hell, with the door still open for all he cares. Let there be an audience, let there be lights, let there be fire and loathing and his busted lip, but god, let there be Bea's animal glare during the whole thing.

This time, it's Bea's turn to laugh, and it's a high, bell-like sound that completely counters Mello's, and roughly. "Oh, are you gonna talk like that to the new product coming in, Mello? Is that how you're gonna get her to tell you what you want, to make this 'whole thing work out in your favour'?"

The grin falls off Mello's face so fast that he can't separate the moment when he dominated and when he was knocked down. Staring at this girl, this product, this _Bea_, Mello swears he sees a forest fire in her smile, her cryptic, wicked smile, and something in his brain snaps at the sight.

This girl gets it. Beatrice Magill, made of doe eyes and pastels and the new addition of a depraved grin, she really, really gets it, and Mello's blood has never been this scorching before.

"No" he says quietly, his eyes fixed on her. Blood bubbles up around the corner of his mouth, blood from Bea's perfect fist. "You're wrong again. Again and again and _again_."

The white-hot pride in Bea's eyes burns out. Mello turns on his heel. A lock of hair clings to his cut at the smooth movement. He makes his way to the door, pausing only long enough to spit out, "And you haven't told me shit, Beatrice Magill, so it's time to think of a better excuse than that."

* * *

Matt doesn't return to Bea's holding room for another hour. So much for being back in a minute, but he figures a minute wouldn't have been nearly long enough to pull himself together, not after that level of self-debauchery.

He opens the door and lets his eyes adjust to the dark. They could really use a fucking lamp in this place. "Bea?" he says. "Sorry, had to take care of something-"

He collides with something soft and warm. The impact is gentle, almost like a hug, and he sucks in a breath and holds it for all it's worth. "Hey."

Bea says nothing. Matt can barely make out her face; his eyes are still floundering in the lack of solid light. All he knows is that she's close, she's warm, and she's making Matt's stomach turn over. And she's shaking.

Without thinking, Matt reaches for her and softly grips her shoulder. "Alright, alright, come on," he murmurs.

"What?" Bea asks, quiet and unsteady. Angry? No way. What for?

"I don't know about you, but I'm sick of this goddamn room. We're not owls."

He leads her out of the room, holding her by the shoulder, and meets the gracious swell of light in the hallway. He can see her eyes now. Good.

Wait, no. _Bad. _

Matt takes Bea by both shoulders now and looks hard in her eye. Bea's eyes, however, are off somewhere far away and dangerous, and he's seen that look before in someone else, someone vicious and brilliant and _Mello_-

"Okay," Matt says, voice low and shaking, "okay, Bea, you don't have to look at me, but you're gonna tell me what's going through your head right now."

"Nothing." Through gritted teeth. "There's nothing in my head."

"Bullshit. Come on."

"Matt-"

He cuts her off with a harsh sigh and releases her. "Guess you think I'm stupid, then?"

"I don't _think_ anything."

Matt shakes his head, runs his fingers through his hair. God, he needs a shower. He needs out. "No, see, you're _thinking_ about Mello, and you're _thinking_ about beating his fucking face in. I know that look."

Bea lifts her head, her hair greasy and hanging in dank strands over her forehead. She looks ill; her face is washed out and the colour of candle wax, her eyes are sunken in and glassy, and her mouth is…

No. No, there's nothing wrong with her mouth. Matt serves it a lingering glance, hoping to find some sort of flaw, but it's pouted and pale and half-open, unmarked.

And not letting out any words. That, Matt knows, is what's the most frightening and most confirming of all.

"Look," Matt whispers, "we're gonna go for a walk. Me and you. Outside. No one will see us in the dark, so we can go anywhere you want. But I'm gonna get you out of this place for awhile so you can lose that look in your eyes."

Bea sways on her feet a little, her gaze glued wearily somewhere behind Matt. He ruffles his hair again in an attempt to give his hands something to do. It's better, he supposes, than reaching out and ruffling hers. "Now go put a jacket on. You'll freeze out there."

"I'm fine," Bea murmurs, still staring off into space.

Matt's face goes slack. "You're skin and bones, Bea. I bet I could see your ribs if I pulled your shirt up-"

And he stops right there.

He is _not_ getting into this again.

"We can't even leave this place," Bea presses. "I've probably been reported by now, there will be posters and missing signs all over the city with my face on them."

Matt gives a soundless laugh, shoulders bobbing. "Then I guess we've got some covering up to do."

"What?"

"Follow me." Matt takes her hand again, not giving her a choice, and leads her down the maze of cement hallways until they reach the lonely room with the crooked door that Matt calls home. He nudges the door open with his boot and lets go of Bea's hand, waiting for her reaction.

Matt's "room" is a sorry sight and he knows it. The cold grey floor is littered with empty Chinese food boxes, cigarette butts, stripped wires, and scraps of paper with his own scrawled handwriting; sometimes he gets these thoughts that need writing down, that need recording with the blunt point of a pencil, only to be crumpled up and discarded on the floor with the rest of his personal trash. Sweaters and T-shirts lay like flat, deformed bodies, here-and-there things of black and white, dark green, threadbare brown. Amidst the wreckage of a scattered mind are shoelaces, pliers, game cartridges, the innards of a computer.

"Don't mind the mess," Matt says in his best Lucille Ball voice. "Never quite got around to that spring cleaning shit." He tackles a pile of dirty clothes in search of something that won't swallow Bea whole.

Meanwhile, Bea reverts to eight years old and explores the disaster area at her feet. "No bed?"

"Don't sleep."

"Liar. You told me you sleep all the time, whenever you want to."

Matt grins at her over his shoulder. It goes unnoticed due to her being busy rooting her little nose through his things. As long as she doesn't touch the scraps of thoughts on the floor. "Alright, let me correct myself, princess. I don't sleep _here_." He picks up a royal blue long-sleeved shirt and shakes it out of its knot. Oh, far too big for Bea's bones. "Too much energy. It's impossible to sleep in a room with too much energy."

"What do you mean?"

Another sweater, this one a dark grey thing with skinny black stripes. A visual of Bea wearing it comes to Matt's mind. Nah. "You don't feel it? You don't get that sense that there's just…just way too much _stuff_ in here?" He whistles, shakes a lock of auburn hair out of his eyes. "I don't know how you don't feel that…"

Bea drags her fingertips across a computer blueprint tacked to the wall. "Could just be your imagination."

Matt raises his eyebrows in the middle of analyzing a ratty green sweatshirt. "Yeah," he mumbles, "a fucking gigantic one."

"Hmm?"

"Nothing."

The two are silent for awhile, Matt rummaging through laundry and Bea shuffling dreamily along the floor. At the bottom of the laundry pile, he pulls out a sweater the colour of fresh ashes flicked from a cigarette, thumbholes ripped in the wrists; he tosses it to Bea, who has occupied herself with shuffling through a pile of compact discs atop a tower of pizza boxes. It sails through the air and lands on her head. "Here you go," he says. "It's not your pretty skirts, hope you don't mind."

Bea gives him a look that he can't decide is either angry or indignant. Knowing this whirlwind of a girl, probably both. "I'm not a paper doll," she says softly, looking down at the sweater now. Her eyes go round and fizzy, like soda water in a highball glass. "I'm not a product in a pretty skirt."

Stunned into silence, Matt watches this odd display, frozen in the middle of ducking down to grab a pair of jeans. He clears his throat and is brought back to life. "Which is why you're gonna wear these," he finishes before tossing the jeans to her. Bea seems to snap out of her puzzlement and catches them at the last moment. "Paper dolls don't wear clothes like those, do they?"

Bea gives a small, wary shake of her head and turns around. "No. No, they don't."

"_Oui." _Matt follows suit in turning around and stares at the ceiling, back arched and hands behind his head. _Beatrice est tres jolie. _

"Wow," Bea says breathily after a few seconds. "I'm like a flea in this. An amoeba."

Matt cracks his back and groans in relief. "Yeah, not to mention I'm less of a human and more of a beanstalk."

He hears Bea laugh a little at that, and it's a quiet sound this time, much softer around the edges. He turns around to look at her, and sees her swimming in _his_ sweater, _his_ jeans, in _his _room, and something about this is suddenly too bizarre for him to look straight at her anymore. Clearing his throat, he gives her a nod. "Looks good, though." _Oh, I need a cigarette._

Bea plucks curiously at the sweater, pulling it away from her chest and letting it sink back down. It falls flat against the shrinking swell of her chest. Matt clears his throat again. "Come on," he says, walking to the door. "We should go before Mello sees us."

"He'll know we're not here," Bea protests, not moving from her spot on the floor.

Matt shrugs. "Then let him. I don't care. It's better than you staying here thinking about how to kill him, right?"

Bea's eyes flare for a moment, but it's the fact that she says nothing that tells Matt the most.

* * *

"The first thing we're gonna do," Matt says the second they're away from the warehouse, "is get you something to eat."

Bea immediately tries to protest, her stomach having resorted to being nothing more than a cranky pit, but Matt stops her before she can speak. "Really," he says. He glances sideways at Bea as he lights a cigarette, cupping his hands around the flame. "I'm gonna get you the most obscenely fat-drenched burger this side of L.A. Hell, I'll ask for _extra_ fat, just for you, baby."

"Trying to kill me, huh?" Bea wraps her arms around herself, feeling the chill of the late night even through Matt's sweater. There's that campfire smell again, the smell of youth and tobacco all threaded and stitched in with the thin wool. "Trying to give me a heart attack?"

Matt's eyes widen a fraction, his hand freezing in the middle of pulling his lighter away, but the moment passes and he shakes his head. "No, I'm trying to get some meat on those bones of yours. You're not looking so great lately."

"Huh, thanks."

Matt shakes his dark head, waving the comment off with the back of his hand. "Nah, I meant…ah, shit. Came out wrong."

Bea gives a tired laugh. She's so very, very tired. "I know what you meant."

"Really, though. You still look, you know, _good_ and all, _really_ good, but…" He takes a long, sweeping drag of his cigarette, scuffing his boots on the ground as he walks. He holds the smoke a little too long in his throat and gives a small cough, not looking at her. "But you're not eating, Bea. And it's showing."

Bea stares at her shoes. Left, right, left, right. Keep walking.

Matt sighs out smoke. The wind carries it into her open mouth and she breathes in the sharp taste of nicotine. "Mello agrees with me."

Stop walking. Look up. "Mello?"

Matt furrows his brow, puzzled by her repetition. "Wow, have you blocked him out of your head that much, Bea?"

_Tried it_, she doesn't say.

"But yeah," Matt goes on, looking back down at his boots. Scuff, scuff. "He's actually the one that brought it up."

"When?"

"Today." He shrugs. "Sometime around this morning."

_You look like the walking dead. You're not eating again, are you._

Bea closes her eyes and walks in slow, measured steps. Mello's face. Mello's voice. Quick, unsteady steps. Clenching fists.

"Hey, hey," Matt eases, catching up to her in half a second with his mile-long legs. "Don't go buying yourself a gun or anything. That's one place I won't take you to."

Bea sucks in a breath through her nose, holds it like Matt would with smoke. Her eyes meet his cigarette, his glowing, grinning cigarette, and she thinks, _relief._ Without pausing, she says, "Let me see that."

Matt's brow furrows in confusion, then concern, then recognition. Eyes on Bea, he pinches the cigarette free from his lips and holds it a couple inches from her face. "This?" he says softly.

Smoke breathes out from the orange mouth. It irrigates into her nostrils, heavy and pungent and lovely. "Yeah," she murmurs, "let me see it."

Matt's expression doesn't change; it's quiet, firm, probing for something in Bea's face that she can't name. Or perhaps doesn't _want_ to name, because she's too absorbed in the cross-eyed view of the cigarette between his long fingers. "You're looking at it," he drawls, slow and syrupy.

Bea says nothing. Only stares at the ginger tip currently burning away before her.

Matt leans in closer to her, his face lit vaguely by the cigarette. On either side of it, there are bottle-green eyes driving into her own amber ones. "If you think _this_ is going to make you feel better," he says, "you're only half-right."

And just like that, Matt pulls away from her, straightens up, and puts the cigarette back between his lips. He continues walking with a cool gaze set straight ahead of him as Bea, appalled, stands behind and stares helplessly at his back. "Half-right?" she asks, throwing her arms up. She jogs up to his side. "What's being 'half-right'?"

Matt breathes out through his nose. With an elegant flick of his finger, he taps smoldering ashes onto the ground. "I started smoking when I was thirteen."

"Yeah?"

Matt gives her a look. "Doesn't that tell you anything on its own?"

She's too tired for this. "No."

A car's headlights come into view around the corner, and they fan over Matt's entire frame as they pass, lighting up the lean shape of him. In this brief flash of perfect light, Bea sees his eyes, and they're everywhere but on her. "Well, I've been smoking a lot lately. Probably more than I ever have, because smoking's always, you know, made things come together a little bit. It slows things down." At this, he meets her eye and holds it. "But I've got _a lot_ of problems, Bea."

Bea feels her throat go dry. She breaks the gaze and focuses on walking, step by step, left, right, left, down the dark interstate of a shadowed Los Angeles.

* * *

Upon entering a run-down fast food joint tucked between an auto shop and a rusty gas station, Matt leans in to Bea's ear and says, "Go get a seat in the back corner. Keep your eyes down."

When she turns her head, her hair brushes Matt's lips, and he has to count a slow ascent to ten beneath his breath before approaching the cashier to order. Number six for him, and, let's see, what's the best option for a girl that needs to get some colour back to her face? Some meat on her bones? A number eight looks promising, or perhaps the-

And then he sees it.

Behind the greasy ponytail of the cashier, Bea's face is tacked to the wall, smiling the most paper-doll smile he's ever seen. _HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MISSING GIRL? _

"Can I help you, sir?" the cashier asks.

Matt stares at the poster a second longer, his heart stalling like a dead engine, before he shakes his head and gives an absentminded wave to the man behind the register. He spots Bea sitting in the back, looking out the window with her chin in her hand. She looks up just in time for Matt to nod to the exit and mouth, "_Out."_

* * *

Mello is toweling off from a shower when he receives a call from Matt. Before the guy can get any sort of word out, Mello asks, "Where'd you take her?"

Through the phone, Mello hears the sounds of cars passing, wind blowing. "_Wow, you catch on quick."_

Mello rubs the towel along his neck boredly. "It's not that hard to figure out when the girl isn't in her holding room and you've gone M.I.A., Matt."

_"If you'd seen the state this girl was in-"_

"Don't bother explaining it," Mello cuts in. "I'm well aware of that girl's 'states' by now."

_"Then I'll get to the point. Missing posters."_

Mello freezes in the middle of drying his face. _Shit. _"How many?"

_"Only one so far, but it was in a food joint, so hundreds of people could see it in a single day."_

Leaning against the shower wall, Mello stares up at the water stains on the ceiling and says, "Did Bea see it?"

_"I got her out of there without telling her about it, made up some excuse for leaving, but for all I know…"_

"Where is she now?"

_"Bathroom at Denny's. I checked and didn't see any posters inside, so it should be clear here. I told her I had to go outside for a smoke to buy some time to call you." _Matt sighs. _"Shit, man, I know we were expecting it to get out eventually, but what do we tell her…?"_

Mello covers his eyes with his cool palm, pressing gently against his eyelids. Quiet. Black. He exhales slowly through his mouth, inhales sharply through his nose. _I don't know_, he doesn't say.

His rosary slides off the sink, nearly hits the floor, but he jerks into action and catches it just in time. He slips it over his head, the phone still against his ear. The cold cross touching his chest now, things find their center and slow down, and he knows what to do. With his foot, he opens the cabinet beneath the sink and sees the small plastic bag; inside, there are a pair of scissors and a bottle of dark brown hair dye.

_"Mel? You there?"_

"We've gotta do it," Mello mutters.

_"Huh? Do what?"_

Matt gets it in about four seconds without Mello having to explain anything.

_"Dammit. God _dammit_, Mello, she's gonna kill you twice over if you even _try_ to-"_

"Get back here," Mello says. "Make sure she eats something first, and get back here." He pauses. Another car passes through the earpiece. "And leave the telling part to me."

Allowing no room for argument, he closes his cell phone, closes his eyes, and shuts off his mind. His fingers stroke the red beads lying passive and cold against his chest.

_

* * *

_

When Bea looks away from the window, she sees Matt mouthing, "_Out_."

No questions asked, no brows raised, Bea stands up from the booth and keeps her eyes down, down on her dirty shoes that had been white just a few months ago. Now, they're a ratty, unsightly grey-brown, and she couldn't give less of a shit anymore. It's hard to give a shit about anything when you're wearing Matt's clothes, thick with that smell of campfire and sleep.

She walks down the aisle, passing tables and booths and chairs people had neglected to push in, and keeps her eyes on the back of Matt's boots. Down. Keep looking down.

Wait.

Look up. Just for a second. Is that-

And as Matt leads her out of the building, shoulders tense through his shirt, Bea sees her own face smiling back at her, held up to the wall with a strip of electrical tape.

* * *

_Mmm, by the way, forgive me for my shitty French. If anyone would like to know what Matt was saying to Bea, it's, um…rather embarrassing, to be honest. -blush-_

_You guys are great. Let me just put that out there. Really, really super mongo great. _


End file.
